If you’ve ventured out to revisit a UBC Library Map Collection in Walter C. Koerner Library recently, we will expected have met Evan Thornberry, who assimilated UBC Library as a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Librarian in July.
In his day-to-day, Evan answers anxiety questions, skeleton workshops, and gives category presentations, in an bid to yield support to researchers and students opposite campus in their spatial research. “GIS Librarians are a face of a library for all kinds of place-based or spatial research,” he explains. “I work many closely with a GIS Analyst, Paul Lesack. We tackle all of a map and GIS-related reference.”
Given UBC Library’s endless imitation map and atlas collection, Evan also gets to hoop copiousness of paper maps. “UBC has finished a unequivocally good pursuit of maintaining their paper map collection, and a lot of libraries haven’t finished that. It’s expected going to grow in value to researchers,” he says.
These days, spatial investigate isn’t singular to a forestry and embankment departments, with whom Evan mostly collaborates. Advances in record have done map information some-more accessible. “Researchers in other departments are meddlesome in mapping since they’re starting to see some-more maps out there accessible in digital format. They’re removing ideas about how to request a spatial member to their research.”
To symbol this transition, Evan started a GIS orator series, Visualizing a World, that hosts talks by comparison cartographers and other geo-spatial researchers. The initial talk, that was hold in October, featured cartographer Anton Thomas, who specializes in hand-drawn maps, while a second showcased investigate from medical geographer Emily Acheson, now enrolled as a PhD claimant in Geography during UBC. “Anything can be analyzed in a spatial sense. we wish a speakers’ array to illustrate that,” says Evan.
Talking about his possess geographic moves, Evan relocated to Vancouver from Boston, where he looked after Boston Public library’s map collection by a Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, a nonprofit organization. However, as a Western Washington University graduate, he isn’t new to a West Coast and is happy to be behind in a city with a colourful bicycling culture. He’s also started brushing adult on his painting skills: “I come from a family of artists, and we consider creation digitally hand-drawn maps would be fun. we conclude a artistic value that cartographers give to their product.”
Learn some-more about a UBC Library Map Collection by visiting the GIS Lab during Koerner Library.
