At Large in the Library: Geosophy

This blog has mentioned University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Emeritus Yi-Fu Tuan in earlier posts. His most recent book, Humanist Geography: An Individual's Search for Meaning, will be coming soon to Tulane University Libraries.

Maps and Models

I mentioned Professor Emeritus Yi-Fu Tuan in an earlier post, his importance as a humanist geographer and teacher. Recently a group of former students and librarians from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geography Department began to make his "Dear Colleague" (1985-2008) letters available to the public via the portal here. See, for example a letter inspired by a lunch with noted cartography historian David Woodward (15 December 1985):

"A map is a two-dimensional model of reality. Or, as David puts it, a model is a three-dimensional map. Maps and models are both artifacts, but a model can be a feature in the landscape -- indeed, a monumental feature. In traditional societies, the house can often be interpreted as a model of the cosmos. The floor plan of the house, with its partitions and directional points, are a two-dimensional map of the cosmos. The three-dimensional house is a model -- a three-dimensional map -- of the larger reality of the heavens and the earth."

Photograph above: Marjory Collins, Camouflage class in New York University, where men and women are preparing for jobs in the Army or in industry, New York, N.Y. They make models from aerial photographs, re-photograph them, then work out a camouflage scheme and make a final photograph, March 1943. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. on flickr.

This Place Matters

The National Trust for Historic Preservation launched an initiative to celebrate and protect distinctive places as part of its "This Place Matters" Program for Preservation Month, May 2008:

"The This Place Matters campaign is designed to help people share the place that matters to them, wherever these places happen to be."

Visit www.preservationnation.org/thisplacematters and/or register on the National Trust's website, www.preservationnation.org .

If you haven't read University of Wisconsin Geography Professor Emeritus Yi-Fu Tuan's Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perceptions, Attitudes and Values (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1974) [TSA LIBRARY GF41.T82] or his Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977) [HTML G 71.5 .T8 1977], I would highly recommend them!

If you've never heard of Yi-Fu, click here for a sense of his impact.