As I prepare to introduce readers to the content of issue 76, I recognize the changing role of the “Letter from the Editor” in an evolving journal. Past Editors would reflect on scintillating new content premiering on the gleaming pages of our paper journal. Now, I reflect on illustrious articles you may have seen some time ago on the bedazzling pages of our website, www.cartographicperspectives.org.
This transformation recognizes the importance of posting content after its acceptance by Section Editors or myself in as timely a manner as possible. No less should be expected with our commitment to blazing a trail through the landscape of open access publication. Authors love it. Readers presume it. Still, it was no easy task to take this spark of an idea and carefully enkindle it to the point that it shines.
For making this happen over the past three years, I owe my sincere thanks to Rob Roth, who stepped down from his duties as Assistant Editor after CP 75. Rob was always a strong proponent of making CP open access and promptly available. Moreover, he was willing and somehow able to commit his time and effort to this cause, despite competing pressures to complete a Ph.D. dissertation and begin a tenure-track faculty position. I feel CP owes much of its success in transforming itself into its current format to Rob’s efforts.
With this in mind, I managed to convince Rob to take on more, different work. Rob has agreed to serve on the Editorial Board of CP. Additionally, along with Anthony Robinson, Rob will serve as Guest Editor for a Special Issue of CP dealing with representation, cognition, and behavior. Look for articles on these hot topics in the full issue of CP 77, or even sooner on our website!
I’m also pleased that Daniel Huffman has agreed to take over Rob’s duties as Assistant Editor. Daniel’s efforts to date with CP have focused on layout and copyediting. With Daniel’s swelling credentials as Director of Operations at NACIS, I am glad he is has agreed to take up the torch of keeping web content current. As Daniel is an Editor of the first two Atlas of Design volumes, I’m confident the web pages will be lustrous in design as well.
In other news, I’m happy to announce the winner of the CP Student Peer-Reviewed Paper competition for 2013. Nicholas Perdue was awarded the $1,350 prize for his contribution “The Vertical Space Problem,” which appeared in CP 74 and offers an innovative approach to mapping multiple floor residential patterns. Nick feels the award motivated him to transform his Master’s thesis into an article. He also believes CP provided valuable insight and experience with the peer-review process. We hope the beacon of open access and timely publication continues to attract such quality submissions from students researching cartography.
Returning to CP 76, the peer-reviewed articles herein strive to bring information and representation to light. Tom Patterson takes inspiration from classic cartographers to represent the relief of the unseen seafloor of Hawaiʻi, in spite of bathymetric data laden with artifacts. Jari Korpi and his colleagues write about a different sort of cartographic challenge, testing the ability of users to identify partially occluded symbols on a map. These contributions focus on designing maps that are more appealing and useful to the greater cartographic community.
This issue’s Cartographic Collections section, authored by Lori Dekydtspotter and Heiko Mühr, highlights the Lilly Library War of 1812 collection. They nicely integrate historical maps with a discussion of the emerging national geography in the early 19th century. The current Visual Fields showcases the work of Kelly Abplanalp, who combines hand-drawn linework with computer automated shading to produce evocative terrain maps of the Pacific Northwest.
On the Horizons features a contribution from Richard Donohue and his colleagues, who explain how Leaflet and jQuery can be used to create time series maps using proportional symbols. This tutorial should prove illuminating to anyone exploring mapmaking on this forefront of the technology. In the Practical Cartographer's Corner, Paul Hunt of the University of Nebraska at Omaha steps the reader through an innovative mashup that allows the user to explore the voluminous data available from the US Census Bureau. Finally, rounding off the issue are three reviews by Patti Day, Ian Muehlenhaus, and Reviews Section Editor Lisa Sutton, with each of the books reviewed offering a very different perspective on the history of mapmaking.
I hope you enjoy this issue of CP, regardless of when and how you are exposed to the various articles.
Patrick Kennelly
Editor