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The founding of Halifax in 1749 was a watershed in British imperial policy. The settlement was state-funded and served political, not commercial, aims. Mapping—the creation and representation of geographic knowledge—was essential to Halifax's success because it shaped Britain's relationship to the land and subsequently influenced how Britons in the settlement interacted with each other and with resistant groups. Cartographic knowledge was never static, but instead was affected by cultural, political, and economic realities that directed the work of local commissioned surveyors like Charles Morris, and metropolitan public mapmakers like Thomas Jefferys. From 1744 to 1755, geographic imaginings of Halifax changed to address specific imperial goals: first, reconnaissance maps and surveys delimited boundaries and provided data; second, early settlement geographic knowledge established Britain's claim to the Halifax region by controlling the Native presence and emphasizing British strength; and third, 'popular' cartography rallied support for the empire by promoting attractive imperial images among Britons. Geographic knowledge produced from the Halifax settlement indicates that spatial information was Janus-faced: maps and reports negotiated a fine line between value-free geographic information and imperially favourable geographic imaginations. In each case mapping and its cartographic evidence were key independent variables in the socio-political organization of power that situated early modern Canada in a British Atlantic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge Cartography is the discipline of visually mapping the conceptual structure of ideas, such as the connections between issues, concepts, answers, arguments and evidence. The cognitive process of externalising one's understanding clarifies one's own grasp of the situation, as well as communicating it to others as a network that invites their contributions. This sensemaking activity lies at the heart of the Open Educational Resources movement's objectives. The aim of this paper is to describe the usage patterns of Compendium, a knowledge mapping tool from the OpenLearn OER project, using quantitative data from interaction logs and qualitative data from knowledge maps, forums and blog postings. This work explains nine roles played by maps in OpenLearn, and discusses some of the benefits and adoption obstacles, which motivate our ongoing work. (Contains 4 tables, 2 graphs, 9 figures and 5 footnotes.)

This paper describes how the digital data and published paper maps for the new 5th edition 1:625,000 scale bedrock geological map of the United Kingdom were created. The map is published in two sheets, North and South, covering Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, England and Wales. The first edition was created in 1948 by the simplification and reduction of more than 500 individual maps at 1:63,360 scale (one-inch to one-mile) and this remained the basis for revisions up to the 4th edition. In contrast, the digital data for the map face of the 5th edition were created from two main sources: a digital geological map dataset of Great Britain at 1:50,000 scale; and the geological map of Northern Ireland at 1:250,000 scale. The following phases of work are described: a) data analysis and provisional unit selection; b) re-digitising; c) data review and revision; d) cartography and compilation of marginalia. For users of earlier editions the map retains a familiar appearance even though it is completely new. The rocks are grouped together differently and classified in new ways and they are identified with a new alphanumeric system of labels. The content and layout of the marginalia have been redesigned with new explanatory notes and cross sections included. Two explanatory booklets provide succinct summaries of the geological history of each area. The maps accompanying this article are customised digital images created especially for publication, for non-commercial use, in the Journal of Maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The First World War (1914–1918) revolutionized warfare in many ways: in addition to new technologies the old and well-known one of maps acquired a crucial role in sharing information, and understanding and controlling the battlefield. This paper advances three main arguments: first, that maps became an integral part of every aspect of warfare; second, that maps became a mindset, a language to understand, rationalize, and share any kind of information; and third, that it is necessary to rethink the concept of the mapmaker and include within it the multitude of soldiers that at any level collected information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The GB1900 project transcribed almost all text on 1:10,650 mapping covering Great Britain, published circa 1900: 2.6 million geo-referenced text strings, so possibly the largest specifically historical gazetteer. Nearly 1200 volunteers made 5.5 million transcriptions, including "confirmations." This paper describes the project's interaction with online volunteers and then presents their experience, as recorded through the online system itself, six in-depth interviews and 162 responses to an online questionnaire. We find that, unlike volunteers in physical science "citizen science" projects, they were motivated by personal interest in the maps, in places that held meaning for them, and in how places had changed. These conclusions enable us to offer suggestions for volunteer recruitment and retention in similar future projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present the results of an original research study that was based on the analysis of British charts of the Adriatic produced during and immediately after military operations undertaken by British forces and their allies against Napoleon in the Adriatic. We analyse the creation and production of British charts of the Adriatic from the first charting campaign of the Hydrographic Office of 1800-1801 to charts produced in the period of British rule over the island of Lissa of 1811-1815 to the first systematic hydrographic surveying of the Adriatic of 1817-1819 under the leadership of William Henry Smyth that resulted in the first hydrographic atlas and pilot book of the Adriatic. At the same time, the paper evaluates the British contribution to the creation of some of the first reliable nautical charts of the Adriatic and to the development of the nautical cartography of the Adriatic in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at the exhibits sponsored by the British Ecological Society is presented. Topics include the purpose of land use mapping first as a record on maps of the actual and existing land use, and the Human Settlement and land use in Snowdonia against the background of vegetation ecology in the area. The meeting featured several speakers including Dr Woodhead, Dr Reynoldson, and Mr Le Cren.

The article announces the winners of the British Cartographic Society awards in 2012 including Kent Habitat Maps for the Avenza Award for Electronic Mapping, Cultural Briefing Map in Kenya for the John C. Bartholomew Award for Small Scale Mapping, and the local terrain deformation inspired by hand-painted panoramas for the Henry Johns Award.

Information on several papers discussed at the conference of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS/IBG) held in August 2009 in Manchester, England is presented. It says that the interrelationship between state cartography and indigenous peoples in several contexts were examined in the papers in session one. Meanwhile, the paper opened by Nick Baron of the University of Nottingham in the session two analyzed the cartography of Soviet between 1919 and 1925.