mapwork

I rely quite a lot on maps as I do not have a good sense of direction. I retreated from the library the other day because I could not find an office I had been to in there before - it wasn't marked on the maps because (I think!) although it is in the library it belongs to a different service. It can also be quite hard to find specific buildings on this campus unless you have a portable map. I find it very hard to imagine what use maps such as this one, just outside the library, might be. It gives a plan of building locations, each building being marked with a number. The number does not relate to any kind of available key; nor are the building numbers visible on the buildings themselves.

I think the reading and authoring of maps is a fascinating topic. There is such a need for a strong mutual striving towards shared understandings of symbols that in a way it is the archetypal 'literacy.' You don't always know what you can do with a map straight away until you arrive at a really good active understanding of it; I would be quite handicapped if the 'mini map' function was turned off in my 'virtual worlds' project for example, and yet I probably had no idea it was there let alone how to use it when I first went 'inworld.'

I think 'mapwork' would be a fantastic future theme for the Institute of Advanced Studies here at Lancaster. But I see the closing date has gone for 2009-10. I have time to think about it perhaps for the following year! I wonder what themes were submitted.

Julia