16 June 2021

armchair traveler: Edmunds, Washington/Maine

 

At today's virtual meeting of the VRA Cataloging & Metadata Standards Committee (CaMS), someone mentioned Story Maps software in connection with our discussion of coding the geographic coordinates of a building depicted in an image. I googled "story maps" after the meeting and went for a visit at the Library of Congress. I picked the Roadside America story map from photos by John Margolies who could easily be called the father of roadside Americana. Touring about the story map, i settled on various places I've visited. I clicked on the furthest east pin in far eastern Maine, near the bridge over to Campobello Island (New Brunswick) which I memorably visited with Christie. The pin led to the picture above and the metadata said the sign was located in Edmunds, Washington. Wrong side of the continental United States. My first thought was that the pin had slipped off the West Coast and ended up on the East Coast.

Appropriately enough, I ended up going into a rabbit hole to figure out why the pin got in the wrong place. Did the coordinates get entered wrong? But the coordinates were not in the LC bib record for the image. Then I zoomed into the part of Maine where the pin was stuck. Ah, Edmunds, Maine. The authorized heading for the town in Washington is Edmonds but there's a reference from Edmunds.

The image metadata indicated that the Harvey's Tavern sign was on Route 99. No Route 99 in that part of Maine but there it was in Washington. Got the little yellow man in Google Maps to take me on a tour of Route 99. There was the sign though it now says Harvey's Lounge. The picture of the rabbit appears to be the same. That stretch of Route 99 looks pretty busy nowadays.