Friday, June 10, 2005

Above Black Mesa

A patron came to the reference desk the other day who hoped we had a book of Barbara Richardsonsatellite photos of New Mexico. Well no, we said, we don't have a book that would do the job, but we can probably find what he needed on the web.
       It turned out he wanted to see Black Mesa from above. We looked it up in topozone, just to get the coordinates, and plugged them into terraserver. By golly, easy as that. Another view from terraserver.
       The patron also wanted information about its religious and historical significance, but didn't have time to wait while we hunted in various books about the Pueblo Revolt for details about San Ildefonso's refuge on Black Mesa in the aftermath of the Revolt. So he left, but we kept hunting. The most detailed description we found among the books the library owns is in Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt : identity, meaning, and renewal in the Pueblo world / edited by Robert W. Preucel (in the chapter by Rick Hendricks, "Pueblo-Spanish Warefare in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico").
       There's a Marcia Keegan photo of Black Mesa on the Clear Light Books web site. Or search google images for many more.

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