This week (May 20/21) COGS hosted a symposium of student presentations (Cartography and Geovisualization, Geospatial Data Analytics, GIS and GIS:Remote Sensing.
The presentations were made with Teams in the AV Room and the Board Room.
One of the presentations was by Christian Gastmeier: “Mapping the Geography of Places: A GeoAI and Cyber-cartographic study of the Annapolis Valley. Data input included Volumes 1-10 of my blog, ernestblairexperiment.wordpress.com from 2017-2026.
ernestblairexperiment takes its name from Ernest Buckler, author of ‘The Mountain and the Valley’. The British author, Eric Blair who wrote under the name, George Orwell. Experiment because it has been an experiment in the use of online communication (blogging).
Christian has taken on the challenge of applying the tools of GIS and AI to this collection of blog posts.
While at COGS, I was talking to Andrew Hannam, Library Technician in Lawrencetown. He confirmed that all Librarians at NSCC campuses have been ‘let go’ to meet provincial budget cuts. Given the importance of the written history of these collections to the institutions and future students, this is a matter of considerable concern (see Community Engagement, Antiques Map Tour and Map Stories).
Today, while I listened to the student online presentations, I had to worry about the ‘sense of place’, and the viability of three separate campuses in the Annapolis Valley: Lawrencetown, Middleton and Kentville — especially one with a focus on the Geographic Sciences.
It seems to be a contradiction to talk about ‘a sense of place’ and yet have the students online with no, or an empty, consideration of ‘place’. What does this mean for our ‘community’?
Postscript
Yesterday, Heather and I, in order to maintain our ‘sense of place’, walked the Peter Point trail in Kejimkujik National Park.
Ernest Blair Experiment 