Mapping Information Landscapes

Mapping Information Landscapes presents the first in-depth study of the educational implications of the idea of information literacy as ‘the capacity to map and navigate an information landscape’. Written by a leading researcher in the field, it investigates how teachers and learners can use mapping in developing their ability to make informed judgements about information, in specific places and times. Central to the argument is the notion that the geographical and information landscapes are indivisible, and the techniques we use to navigate each are essentially the same. The book presents a history of mapping as a means of representing the world, ranging from the work of medieval mapmakers to the 21st century. Concept and mind mapping are explored, and finally, the notion of discursive mapping: the dialogic process, regardless of whether a graphical map is an outcome. The theoretical framework of the book weaves together the work of authors including Annemaree Lloyd, Christine Bruce, practice theorists such as Theodore Schatzki and the critical geography of David Harvey, an author whose work has not previously been applied to the study of information literacy. The book concludes that keeping information landscapes sustainable and navigable requires attention to how equipment is used to map and organise those landscapes. How we collectively think about and solve problems in the present time inscribes maps and positions them as resources in whatever landscapes we will draw on in the future. Information literacy educators, whether in libraries, other HE courses, high schools or the workplace, will benefit by learning about how mapping – implicitly and explicitly – can be used as a method of teaching IL. The book will also be useful reading for academics and researchers of information literacy and students of library and information science.

The relational complexity of urban and rural landscapes in space and in time. The development of historical geographical information systems (HGIS) and other methods from the digital humanities have revolutionised historical research on cultural landscapes. Additionally, the opening up of increasingly diverse collections of source material, often incomplete and difficult to interpret, has led to methodologically innovative experiments. One of today's major challenges, however, concerns the concepts and tools to be deployed for mapping processes of transformation-that is, interpreting and imagining the relational complexity of urban and rural landscapes, both in space and in time, at micro- and macro-scale. Mapping Landscapes in Transformation gathers experts from different disciplines, active in the fields of historical geography, urban and landscape history, archaeology and heritage conservation. They are specialised in a wide variety of space-time contexts, including regions within Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and periods from antiquity to the 21st century.

Atlas of Material Worlds is a highly designed narrative atlas illustrating the agency of nonliving materials with unique, ubiquitous, and often hidden influence on our daily lives. Employing new materialism as a jumping-off point, it examines the increasingly blurry lines between the organic and inorganic, engaging the following questions: What roles do nonliving materials play? Might a closer examination of those roles reveal an undeniable agency we have long overlooked or disregarded? If so, does this material agency change our understanding of the social structures, ecologies, economies, cosmologies, technologies, and landscapes that surround us? And, perhaps most importantly, why does material agency matter? This is the story of the world’s driest nonpolar desert, pink flamingos, and cerulean blue lithium ponds; industrial shipping logistics, pudding-like jiggling substrates, and monuments of mud; galactic bodies, radioactive sheep, and the yellowcake of uranium. Put simply, this book dares readers to see the world anew, from material up. Atlas of Material Worlds offers this new relationship to our host environment in a time of mounting crises—accelerating climate change, ballooning socioeconomic inequality, and rising toxic nationalism—uniquely telling materialist stories for practitioners and students in landscape, architecture, and other built environment disciplines.

The relational complexity of urban and rural landscapes in space and in time The development of historical geographical information systems (HGIS) and other methods from the digital humanities have revolutionised historical research on cultural landscapes. Additionally, the opening up of increasingly diverse collections of source material, often incomplete and difficult to interpret, has led to methodologically innovative experiments. One of today’s major challenges, however, concerns the concepts and tools to be deployed for mapping processes of transformation—that is, interpreting and imagining the relational complexity of urban and rural landscapes, both in space and in time, at micro- and macro-scale. Mapping Landscapes in Transformation gathers experts from different disciplines, active in the fields of historical geography, urban and landscape history, archaeology and heritage conservation. They are specialised in a wide variety of space-time contexts, including regions within Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and periods from antiquity to the 21st century. Contributors: Karl Beelen (Karlsruhe IT), John Bintliff (Leiden University / Edinburgh University), Bieke Cattoor (TU Delft), Jill Desimini (Harvard University), Cecilia Furlan (TU Delft / KU Leuven), Ian Gregory and Christopher Donaldson (Lancaster University), Joanna Taylor (University of Manchester), Piraye Hacigüzeller, Frank Vermeulen and Devi Taelman (Ghent University), Ralf Vandam and Jeroen Poblome (KU Leuven), Reinout Klaarenbeek (KU Leuven), Sanne Maekelberg (KU Leuven), Steffen Nijhuis (TU Delft), Cristina Purcar (TU Cluj-Napoca), Changxue Shu (KU Leuven, FWO), Bram Vannieuwenhuyze (University of Amsterdam), May Yuan and Arlo McKee (University of Texas, Dallas) Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

This book moves beyond conventional conceptions of space and place to explore how the spatial imagination has informed our postmodern mapping of literature, culture, history, geography and politics. In this volume, scholars from different academic fields contest new territories for critical expression, venturing into a geocritical discussion of notions of identity, borders, territory, cognitive geographies, glocal cultural mobility, gendered spaces, (post)colonial cartographies, and spaces of resistance. These brilliant discussions of the postmodern dialectics of space and place invite a reappraisal of the value of space in our social, political and historical realities, thus extending the geographical imagination beyond its physical and territorial manifestations and investigating its hitherto uncharted spiritual, psychic, emotional, literary, and symbolic terrains. Bringing together theoretical and critical contributions in the fields of culture, history, politics, and literature, this engaging work invites readers to think geocritically about the significance of space and place in the postmodern age. It represents essential reading for students, critics, and scholars from various academic fields and disciplines, including history, geography, cultural studies, anthropology, political science, literature and critical theory.

Mapping the Political Landscape: An Introduction to Political Science, second edition explores many issues that reflect the large diversity of Canadian society. Taking into account the increasing globalization of issues, this text/reader relates classical concepts of political science to differing political and cultural experiences. Mapping the Political Landscape is divided in to four thematic parts: Politics as Discipline, Ideas, Institutions and Change, with a small section of classic and contemporary readings following each chapter. The text assists the students with the readings by providing a set of questions relating to the readings and thematic commentary.

Mapping has been one of the most fertile areas of exploration for architecture and landscape in the past few decades. While documenting this shift in representation from the material and physical description toward the depiction of the unseen and often immaterial, Cartographic Grounds takes a critical view toward the current use of data mapping and visualization and calls for a return to traditional cartographic techniques to reimagine the manifestation and manipulation of the ground itself. Each of the ten chapters focuses on a single cartographic technique—sounding/spot elevation, isobath/contour, hachure/hatch, shaded relief, land classification, figure-ground, stratigraphic column, cross-section, line symbol, conventional sign—and illustrates it through beautiful maps and plans from notable designers and cartographers throughout history, from Leonardo da Vinci to James Corner Field Operations. Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, introduces the book.

In 1942, the Canadian government forced more than 21,000 Japanese Canadians from their homes in British Columbia. They were told to bring only one suitcase each and officials vowed to protect the rest. Instead, Japanese Canadians were dispossessed, all their belongings either stolen or sold. The definitive statement of a major national research partnership, Landscapes of Injustice reinterprets the internment of Japanese Canadians by focusing on the deliberate and permanent destruction of home through the act of dispossession. All forms of property were taken. Families lost heirlooms and everyday possessions. They lost decades of investment and labour. They lost opportunities, neighbourhoods, and communities; they lost retirements, livelihoods, and educations. When Japanese Canadians were finally released from internment in 1949, they had no homes to return to. Asking why and how these events came to pass and charting Japanese Canadians' diverse responses, this book details the implications and legacies of injustice perpetrated under the cover of national security. In Landscapes of Injustice the diverse descendants of dispossession work together to understand what happened. They find that dispossession is not a chapter that closes or a period that neatly ends. It leaves enduring legacies of benefit and harm, shame and silence, and resilience and activism.