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Morrill Reckoning: Acknowledging Indigenous Lands

By Milan Budhathoki The Morrill Reckoning , one of the latest items added to the BTAA Geoportal, is a project sponsored by University of Maryland Libraries. It was created and fulfilled as part of a certificate practicum requirement by Dr. Lisa Carney in Master in Library Information Science program (2023). This showcase is in line with UMD's commitment to promoting Indigenous knowledge, advancing decolonization efforts, and fostering restorative justice. The initiative is made possible through a 2022-2023 Teaching and Learning Program Grant, " Decolonizing Education to meet the Demands of Climate Change ," led by Patricia Kosco Cossard at UMD Libraries and co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Picture 1:  Altered image of the Morrill Act of 1862 highlighting the words " public land ." This web based Morrill Reckoning exhibit documents the process by which land of over 30 Native American nations was forcibly expropriated and sold to fund the en
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Locating Historical Aerial Photos in the BTAA Geoportal 

By Tara Anthony, Penn State University Libraries   The  BTAA Geoportal  includes historic aerial photography records that span institutions. This post focuses on searching and  locating  aerial photography records in the BTAA Geoportal with a focus on Pennsylvania historical aerial photography collections.    Overview of h istoric aerial photos in the BTAA Geoportal   A  search for aerial photo  yields 1, 701  records  (as of October 2023)  with a h igher  p ortion  of records seen from Pennsylvania, followed by Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Nebraska, and New Jersey . The  time  period  of the aerial photo re cords  l o cated  is from  the present back to the 1900 -1949  time  period , with the most records present in the 1950 to 1999 time  per iod .    A highlight of some resources wi ll be  pr ovided  her e, along with a greater focus on Pennsylvania historic aerial photo collections. Wisconsin Historic Aerial Imagery

Clyde A. Malott (1887-1950) and Indiana’s Lost River Basin

By Ronda L. Sewald It was February of 2021. I'd just returned to Indiana University's Bloomington campus for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Sitting on my desk in the middle of the dimly lit and empty cubicle farm was a small folder. Trying to ignore the gloomy and cave-like atmosphere, I opened the folder and turned my attention to a curious set of sixteen hand-drawn map sheets, all sketched between 1926 and 1931 by someone who went by "Malott" or "C.A.M." It was an odd assortment of topographic and cave maps that paid meticulous attention to rises, sinks, swallow-holes, and a mysterious inland gulf. The maps were clearly related to Indiana karst topography, but what tied them all together and who was "Malott?"   A search on "Malott" in the BTAA Geoportal resulted in one other map, specifically   Drainage Map of the Upper and Middle Parts of Lost River Basin: Orange, Washington, and Lawrence Counti

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign blog post

Featured Item in the Collection: Aerial Stereograms   What is the item? Long before VR headsets hit the tech market, analog stereograms allowed users to view far off places in 3D. The Aerial Stereogram collection at the University of Illinois Map Library contains digitized photos designed to help students interpret aerial photography. Each stereogram is a set of photos taken from slightly different angles that, when viewed through a stereoscope, appear 3D to the viewer. The aerial photos in the stereogram collection were taken between 1936 and 1970 and show natural landforms as well as man-made features. The collection primarily consists of U.S. government photography. Most of the photos are of the United States, although the collection includes a few taken from Canada, Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, and Japan. The collection also includes a digitized catalog with a description of each photo as well as indexes by location, subject, and date.   What BTAA Library submi

An Interview with Matthew McLaughlin

Interviewer: Milan Budhathoki, GIS and Data Librarian, University of Maryland College Park This interview is part of our Researcher Interview series that spotlights some of the interesting work being done using maps/GIS data at the Big Ten Academic Alliance institutions. Researcher Bio Matthew McLaughlin (Matt) is a senior lecturer and mixed media artist in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland College Park. Through his artworks, Matt explores the human relationship with their environments, particularly urban and suburban spaces, and examines how we interact with and observe the spaces we inhabit and modify to fulfill our wants and needs. By manipulating images/maps and re-contextualizing symbols, his work generates fresh spatial perspectives for viewers to contemplate when they confront their own connections with the environment. Webpages: www.matthewtmclaughlin.com (personal website)  https://art.umd.edu/ (department website) How have you been incorporati

Dividing the City: Race-Restrictive Covenants in St. Louis and St. Louis County

By Colin Gordon & Jay Bowen   Featured Item or Collection: Dividing the City What is the item? These items feature data on covenant restrictions in St. Louis. They are part of an effort to document the spatial distribution and extent of a mechanism widely understood to be a root cause of ongoing racial segregation and wealth inequality. They make visible these efforts to maintain racially divided access to property and wealth, which were long concealed in the extended pages of local records. What BTAA Library submitted the item? University of Iowa Interesting tidbits An outgrowth of the Mapping Prejudice project initiated at the University of Minnesota The uneven digitization of property records including racial restrictions presented unique impediments to reproducing the research in Greater St. Louis, Missouri The expansion of private racial restrictions in the St. Louis region were mapped from the late nineteenth century to their decline with S