Stephen Appel joined the UWM Libraries’ staff in 2016 as geospatial information librarian in the American Geographical Society Library (AGSL), one of the foremost cartographic libraries in North America. But he was already well-acquainted with campus and the library, having earned a BS in Conservation and Environmental Science (CES), graduate certificate of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and MS in Geography at UWM, and working as a graduate assistant and then consultant in AGSL. In his current position, Stephen is responsible for AGSL’s digital spatial data collections and related services that support research, scholarship, and coursework in GIS. He is also a member of the Libraries’ Digital Humanities Services team.
Q: What was your route to AGSL?
Stephen: After earning my bachelor’s degree in CES, I felt like I needed some hard skills on my resume. I had taken a GIS course as an undergrad and really liked it, so I decided to continue with that and work toward a GIS certificate, which led to an internship in AGSL and a master’s in geography. During my master’s I started to identify librarianship as a viable path, especially working in map libraries, and I kind of got lucky landing this job.
Q: What is GIS?
Stephen: It’s software that’s specifically for working with data that has some sort of location associated with it, for example, customer records. Lots of people use GIS to make maps, but it is also being used for various analyses specific to something’s location, to recognize that two points of data that don’t necessarily seem connected are by the fact of their proximity.
Q: What drew you to geography?
Stephen: I really like maps. It started early, as a Cub Scout and Boy Scout, where I learned about orienteering and maps, and continued into college with a collection of hiking and camping maps. But I didn’t associate that interest with the discipline of geography until I took my first GIS class, where I found the work very interesting and even fun—taking data and visualizing it, solving problems, making maps.
Q: How do you impact student success?
Stephen: One way is working with students directly through course instruction. When I started my job, I would visit classes and say ‘Hi, I’m Stephen and I work at the AGSL, here are our services, come visit me.’ That has transformed into what I call geospatial information literacy instruction. I am now spending much less time advertising our services and more time talking to students about finding and assessing data for their needs. This semester, for the first time, we are also offering walk-in GIS tutoring that fills a previously unmet need on campus.
Q: You often work with UWM and visiting scholars and researchers. What has been your most interesting collaboration?
Stephen: We are involved in a UWM project right now called Mapping Racism and Resistance, which looks at racially restrictive housing deeds written in Milwaukee during the early part of the 20th century. It’s based on the University of Minnesota’s amazing Mapping Prejudice project, which digitized Twin Cities deeds and covenants, and made maps that visually reflected where non-white people were systematically excluded and unable to build generational wealth. Our UWM project has hired a cartographer who is working with the Geography Department to make maps based on Milwaukee findings. AGSL will collect the data and maps and make them available to the public via our GeoDiscovery app.
Q: You led the development of GeoDiscovery, which was launched last year. Tell me about the app.
Stephen: Before GeoDiscovery, people would request data and we would have to locate and package it, and then burn it on to a CD or place it on Sharepoint—it always required our extensive mediation. With the new app, people can simply search for and download the data themselves. Another benefit is that it doesn’t limit to one particular collection. With GeoDiscovery, all the institutions participating—including the Big Ten Academic Alliance and a number of Ivy League schools and the University of California—share the data.
You have a number of publications and presentations. Is there one you are most proud of?
Stephen: Yes, the one that I think has had the most impact, certainly the one that has been cited the most was about geospatial information literacy instruction published in a special issue of the Journal of Map and Geography Libraries. At the time I was changing up my teaching by incorporating what I had learned about traditional info lit instruction into a framework that included GIS. There were a bunch of other excellent related articles in that issue and it has been fun to compare notes at conferences or via email with those librarians and others.
Q: What is the favorite part of your job?
Stephen: Lately I have really enjoyed getting back into technology, into learning technology. I had to learn so much for the GeoDiscovery project. Just this morning in a training I was talking about how working in the library is such a good place for someone who is really curious because I’m not only allowed to learn on the job but I’m expected to.