When I started at the CSUN Map Library in 2015, I quickly discovered that there was very little organizational memory within the library, a unit whose history could be traced back to the very earliest days of the campus. In 2015 there was only one other staff member, and he had been there only since about 2010 or 2011. So this meant that the contemporary organizational memory only went back a few years.

Faculty/staff in the department knew anecdotal and personal stories about the Map Library, but I quickly discovered that no one really maintained a documented history of one of the largest map collections in California, if not the west coast. There was very little written information about how the Map Library was originally created, how it had been managed over the years, how it acquired its vast cartographic collections, or how decision-making had been done in the past.

More interestingly, there was almost no information about the people who had worked in and managed the Map Library over the years. I was told that there had only been about two or three Map Curators prior to me, but apart from the most recent ones, no one seemed to remember the names of the early Map Curators or their stories. Many of these details seemed to have simply been lost to time.

This ongoing series is an effort to create a documented history of the Map Library, to share what I learn about how it was created, to tell the stories of its Map Curators, and to document the Map Library’s transition from a stand-alone departmental library into one that is now administratively and physically managed by the main campus library–the Oviatt Library. This transition represents a new chapter for one of California’s premier academic cartographic collections (maps, atlases, aerial photographs, and GIS) and should be properly memorialized.

To date, documents that I’ve used to learn about the history of the Map Library and its staff include:
— LA Times historical newspapers;
— CSUN campus newspaper, held within the library’s Archives & Special Collections unit;
— Personal interviews with prior map curators, staff, and student assistants;
— Various internal organizational records and correspondence.

Proper citation and attribution will be applied as much as possible. Please stay tuned to learn more about the history of our wonderful Map Library, its staff, and its collections.