Recording a vision of an ordered Landscape: the example of Perthshire.

Most local and family historians are familiar with the many map resources now available on various internet sites but these tend to focus on small scale mapping of more extensive areas. The researcher attempting to locate mapping at the more local level can be faced with a very fragmented and confusing situation which has tended to underestimate what has been produced, who produced it and where it is located. Using the example of pre-Ordnance Survey estate plans of Perthshire and Kinross, this talk will highlight some of the complexities of a research project which aims to produce a catalogue of such plans for the whole of Scotland and bring the work of several local surveyors to the attention of a wider audience.

Biography:

John Moore is a retired academic librarian who worked at Glasgow University Library, retiring as Collections Manager of one of the largest academic library collections in the UK. Between 2004 and 2010, he served as Secretary to the LIBER Groupe des Cartothecaires, the European Research Libraries Map Curators’ Group and from 2012 to 2017, he was Book Reviews Editor (Europe) for Imago Mundi, the international journal for the history of cartography. He was a long standing member of the Editorial Committee of the Statistical Accounts of Scotland online service and is presently a Trustee and, since 2022, Secretary of the Historic Towns Trust who were involved in the publication of the Historical Map of Perth which was published last year. He has researched, written and presented papers on various aspects of Scottish cartography for over forty years and is the author of two major works on the mapping of Glasgow and the River Clyde.

Please enter via the Soutar Theatre entrance on the West side of the library (through the glass doors).