As mentioned in my previous post, I was up at the RGS Annual Conference for a day last week. As well as my own session, I stayed to listen to a number of sessions, including the cartography one – titled “Why do Geographers Make Maps?”. This one, a double-session, was popular – the room was packed out, and I enjoyed the talks. But my highlight of the day was an evening trip to the John Rylands Library in central Manchester, for an evening viewing of the Mapping Manchester expedition – which got a lot of publicity on that day, in the national press, because of the “Soviet Invasion of Manchester” maps that form part of the collection.
I was delighted too, to see an old (1980) orienteering map in the collection, and a map showing the locations of all (1000s?) of the pubs in Manchester, was quite eye opening! The building that the collection was in was itself pretty awe-inspiring two – it’s neo-gothic style, and reminds me strongly of the (much older) Duke Humphrey’s Library which is deep in the Bodleian Library complex in Oxford. Basically, it’s straight out of “Harry Potter”.