WAML Member of the Month: Jon Jablonski

Where did you go to college?

I started at Boston University on a Navy ROTC scholarship studying math. I left after 2 years as a conscientious objector. I wound up landing at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, and graduated in 1993 with a BFA in photography. After hitting the MLS-glass ceiling at Northwestern’s medical library, I went to the University of Washington for my library degree. I’m now studying part time for an MA in geography.

Tell us what your job at Univ. of Oregon encompasses.

Maps at Oregon are part of the Document Center, which does gov docs, business, microforms, and maps. I do reference in those areas, supervise a cost-recovery aerial photography business, and collect and provide access to maps, GIS data, and the airphotos. There’s a bit of light catalog maintenance for the depository stuff, but most of our tech services are handled by the larger cataloging department. Oh--and I'm the geography subject specialist. So there's selection, instruction, and liaison duties there too.

Where was your first job working with maps?

While at UW I volunteered on a project that was digitizing Soviet topo maps in order to make an atlas and electoral datasets available. The prototype is still up at: http://depts.washington.edu/ceir/

Do you have a favorite map?

There’s this crazy Chile mineral resource map that has such a complicated symbology that it looks like a tartan crazy quilt. For a while I was also taking a cartoon map of Iran to classes that had this great formal portrait of the Shah printed on the back of it, but I think it walked off. I like showing bad maps to cartography classes and begging the students to use their newly acquired map-making skills with care: with great power comes great responsibility you know.

Where is your favorite place to go on vacation?

Heading home to Chicago for family, food, and art is the most common vacation. We haven’t repeated too much because there’s still so many places to go. I’ve been in the northwest for 9 years and haven’t even seen Crater Lake or Mt. St. Helens!

What’s the most fun you ever had at a WAML conference?

The dinner at Liberace’s restaurant was certainly the most interesting setting for a banquet.

What do you like to do when you aren’t being a map librarian?

Well, if it wasn’t for school I’d be playing a lot more tennis. As it is, most of the spare time is spent tending to the garden—we have a drought tolerant flower bed instead of a front lawn.

What book(s) are you reading these days?

I’m in the middle of William Gibson’s "Spook Country," which I started over spring break. I love the worlds that he creates, which are eerily similar to ours—just a little bit more high tech and a lot more interesting. I’m finishing up "The China Fantasy" by James Mann, who used to be the LA Times’ China hand. It’s a good popular non-fiction read on the last 30 years of US-China relations. Next up this weekend is "Red Capitalism in South China," which is required reading for a class.

What is your least favorite thing to do at work?

Complain. UO is a fairly resource-poor institution and the map library has suffered through the neglect that tends to accompany rapid turnover. Ed Thatcher and Peter Stark built a collection that is far too big for 2 people to manage. 6 or 7 would be a more appropriate number. That short-staffedness means that I really have to scramble for help, and that’s always stressful and unpleasant.

And what's your favorite thing to do at work?

I love the show-and-tell for intro to cartography/GIS classes. There’s 2 of them, one in geography and one in planning. Most of the instructors bring their students early in the quarter. They are really encouraged to look at A LOT of maps as they progress. I cover 5 big tables with everything from the aforementioned Brazilian crazy-quilt to our 1793 Treaty of Paris map. I try to just get them into the cases and pulling things out, and also stress that we are perfectly happy to go retrieve things from locked storage. I don’t care if it’s a freshman or a hobo—-our maps are here to be used.