The world of map librarianship is situated neither in the user services department nor special collections, but somewhere in between. I intended to bring a new way of viewing maps – fictional or not – into something interactive and interesting. Especially since surveys and reports indicate a decline in geoliteracy among elementary students and college students. An important observation made by a library educator was, “When students are given the opportunity to map their experiences, they better understand their world and their place in it” which I used as inspiration as I thought about how that could be implemented (Riffe, 2020).
Reference
Riffe, S. (2020, February 4). Librarians receive grant to explore geography education. https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2020/february/libraries-explore-geography-education.html
Hi Kay,
This was a super interesting topic to me, as I’d never heard the term “geoliteracy” before! I think this would be an especially helpful program to have as a way for people to really understand the world around them better and the ways that our perceptions are also shaped a lot by human constructs as much as they are by naturally-occurring ones. To this point, it really stood out to me when you mentioned the idea of thinking critically about maps and questioning the politics/motives/biases/etc that go into creating them — which I think is something many people may not think about. For example, I think of the delineation of the “Middle East”, as it is a term that’s inherently Eurocentric in its position in relation to Europe vs the more neutral Southwest Asia & North African (SWANA) descriptor.