New Stanford center offers insight into the evolution of scientific cartography | Science | AAAS

"The new David Rumsey Map Center, which opened last week at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, showcases what was once one of the world’s great private map collections—more than 150,000 maps, globes, and cartographic artifacts. The collection is especially rich with 18th and 19th century maps that illustrate the birth of scientific cartography. The new center, located within Stanford Libraries, aims to break down the paper-digital divide. Anyone with a scholarly interest in the maps can request an original paper map and use a variety of digital displays—including a 3.6-by-2–meter touchscreen—to blow up the details or layer on other historical maps or modern satellite imagery. The maps are the life’s passion of David Rumsey, a San Francisco, California, collector with an unusual backstory and a fierce commitment to open access. In his 20s, Rumsey co-founded a tech-savvy performance art group that lived on a commune and rejected the commodification of art. In midlife, he made a fortune as a real estate developer. Now 71, Rumsey says he’s always collected maps with the intention of giving them away. Since the early days of the Internet in the mid-1990s, he’s been scanning maps and making them freely available online, even developing some of the technology himself.