Australian Map Circle conference: Finding the Limits
On 12–14 February the Library hosted the annual conference of the Australian Map Circle, Finding the Limits. The conference featured over 20 papers by leading cartographic scholars and historians.
The first day had an ACT flavour, and was opened by Annabelle Pegrum, CEO of the National Capital Authority. The address, Miracles, Maps and Memory, provided an excellent overview of Canberra's development, from the genius of the Griffin Plan to today’s national capital, and highlighted some of the still unexplored components of the design.
Papers by David Headon, Terry Birtles, Matthew Higgins and Greg Wood related the past planning issues to current Canberra development. (The executive of the AMC awarded Greg Wood the Estelle Canning Prize for best conference paper, Mr Scrivener’s Predecessors, examining the origins of Canberra as a potential site for the national capital.)
The initial session was open to the public, and attracted 200 visitors. Subsequent days featured papers on the state of national mapping (Geoscience Australia) and advancements in spatial sciences from early topographic and coastal mapping to satellite imagery and databases. New research into early contact with Terra Australis included a paper by Avan Stallard, a 2005 Norman McCann Summer Scholar. Avan presented a paper on the role of maps in European imagining and discovery of Australia. Allen Mawer related his recent excursion with the Australian Navy to examine early evidence of European discovery of Torres Strait.
On the final day of the conference a session was devoted to the uses of atlases, and the atlas approach to presenting information across topics as diverse as sport, war and Australian birds. Current research included the Mapping the Southern Skies Project being conducted by Dr Paul Francis at Mt Stromlo, the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ mapping of census data, and Reconstructing the Early Melbourne Landscape, a project using current graphic techniques with early maps to ‘reverse map’ inner-urban history.
Maps staff were involved in planning and staging the event, in conjunction with the AMC conference committee. Excellent support was provided by the Library’s Building Services and Information Technology divisions. Selected papers are to be published in the refereed journal, The Globe (Melbourne), later this year.
The program and abstracts for the conference can be found on the Australian Map Circle website, at: http://www.australianmapcircle.org.au/amc2007/
Martin Woods
Curator of Maps
National Library of Australia