Mapping Habit

I came of age as a geographer just as digital mapping technologies were gaining ground. One of my undergraduate professors invented MapQuest -- a couple of years after I had barely passed his fully analog cartography course. During my master's program, I learned about computers in general and computer mapping in particular during many hours as an assistant in our new digital cartography lab. During my doctoral program, I taught a rudimentary computer cartography course because I knew more about the subject than any of the professors -- a situation that began to change dramatically with a brilliant faculty hire that took place at the end of my second year. 

All of which is to say that I was poised to become a GIS hotshot. I even took some online courses with ESRI in my "spare time" as a professor. But gradually, other interests squeezed out my GIS pursuits, and I am a rank amateur at this point. 

See Google MyMaps for annotated links to many of these maps.

Enter Google Maps. Flawed as it is in some important ways, it is a convenient way for me to make and share maps, so I use it a lot -- one could even say compulsively. I use it to make cartographic "life lists" of many places that have mattered to me, as a planning tool for personal or professional travel, or even as a supplement to articles or stories I encounter -- even a song can sometimes need a map!

At this point, I have created almost 100 Google Maps. I can see them all at once by typing "mymaps.google.com" but the resultant list is visible only to me. Above is a snapshot of the top of the list at the moment. If some reader knows a way to make such a list shareable, please let me know. Until then, I have created an annotated list of just a couple dozen. maps -- including some very new ones. Spoiler alert: the newest one as of this writing is Todas las Casas -- a life list of every place I have resided.