The Map Room

An article in Australian Geographic about the map holdings of the National Library of Australia, and its work to get them digitized and put online.

Previously: Australia in Maps.

An update on the story of the copy of Abel Buell’s 1784 map of North America that was auctioned off by the New Jersey Historical Society — to no small amount of controversy — last December. The map was sold to a private collector, David Rubenstein, who is now loaning the map to the Library of Congress for display. (According to Rubenstein’s Wikipedia entry, this is not the first time he’s done this sort of thing.) Thanks to Reid Hardman for the link.

Previously: NJ Historical Society Criticized for Selling Map; Buell’s 1784 Map Fetches $1.8 Million; Rare 1784 Map of the U.S. Being Auctioned Next Month.

Update: More from the Washington Post — part of Rubenstein’s agreement with the Library is that they’re to put the map on display for at least five years.

The New Jersey Historical Society is catching flak for auctioning off its copy of Abel Buell’s 1784 map of North America last month, the Star-Ledger reports. Apparently selling items to pay for operations — or, in the case of the Society, to go towards retiring its $2.6 million debt — is a violation of the code of ethics of the American Association of Museums. The Society’s annual grant has also been eliminated due to state budget cuts, so they’re clearly starving for cash. The Buell map the only item being sold off; the Society’s board president says all the items are extraneous to their mandate.

Previously: Rare 1784 Map of the U.S. Being Auctioned Next Month; Buell’s 1784 Map Fetches $1.8 Million.

The Boston Globe on the Boston Public Library’s $1.8-million makeover that will create a new repository and exhibition space for the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center. “Details being considered include a large digital globe with touch-screen features; a ‘pop-up’ table orienting newcomers to Boston’s rich history and unique geography; large-screen digital displays of maps and other materials; specialized display cases for the collection’s most prized assets; and a map club for kids.” To be completed by next fall, which sounds optimistic if things haven’t been finalized. Via MapHist.

Previously: Leventhal Does RSS, Flickr; The Boston Globe on the Leventhal Map Center; Leventhal Map Center Web Site Launches.

Cartographic historian Seymour I. Schwartz, who previously donated his map collection to the University of Virginia, apparently had a few maps left over for the university in whose medical school he taught: he has donated 40 maps and drawings of western New York, including the first map printed in the colony of New York (1723), to the University of Rochester. An exhibition of the collection will open at the University’s Rush Rhees Library on November 11. Three of the maps can be viewed in high resolution here. (Photo credit: University of Rochester.)

The Denver Post takes a look at the map holdings of the Denver Public Library, which — in no small part due to the library’s former status as a federal repository — are apparently substantial. “If you’re feeling lost, head…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via MapHist, I learn that the Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map Center has a newish RSS feed. It also has a Flickr account, though that’s been up and running for some time….  •  Continue reading this entry.

“You could lose yourself in here,” says The Scotsman’s Peter Ross, in his expansive piece about the National Library of Scotland’s map collection. Via MapHist….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology in Kansas City, Missouri gets a mention in the travel section of the New York Times (in an article on rare book collections that are accessible to the public) for its…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Portland Press Herald covers the reopening, after two years, of the University of Southern Maine’s Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education in their new facilities. Via MapHist. Previously: Osher Map Library Grand Reopening….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The University of Southern Maine’s Osher Map Library is holding a number of events on the third weekend of October to celebrate its grand reopening: on Friday, October 16, a lecture by John Hessler on Thoreau; on Saturday the 17th,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Times Higher Education has the fascinating story about how two rare 17th-century Portuguese atlases came to be found in the bowels of the library of the Queen’s College, Oxford….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Ball State University’s GIS Research and Map Collection has a blog, which has already been running for three years….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Bartholomew Archive at the National Library of Scotland contains the business records, publications, working maps and printing plates of John Bartholomew & Son Ltd., the Edinburgh mapmaking firm. The Archive is still a work in progress: the Library is…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The California State Automobile Association has donated 7,000 old road maps to Stanford University’s Branner Earth Sciences Library and Map Collections; the donation was triggered by the CSAA’s move to new headquarters with less space. “Along with the road maps,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

David Rumsey — he of the eponymous website — is donating his entire collection of 150,000 maps, plus digital copies, to Stanford University. Just not all at once: “While Rumsey’s agreement with Stanford calls for his entire collection to be…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Off camping for a few days; here are a few links to tide you over: Roger Hart’s very good blog, GeoCarta, has moved to a new address and a new platform. The Sandusky Library Archives Research Center’s map collection is…  •  Continue reading this entry.

On May 13, a fire destroyed the faculty building at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands; the fire was feared to have destroyed the faculty library’s holdings, including a significant map room, which was on the main floor….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Cambridge University Library’s Map Department has reopened in its newly refurbished map room (no relation). Via MapHist. Previously: Cambridge Map Department Will Be Renovated….  •  Continue reading this entry.

We’ve seen books come out that were based on the map holdings of the Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, and the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec; now it’s the turn of the National Library of Australia. The…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Public Library’s skunkworks is currently experimenting with a number of blogs, one of which — quite naturally, given the existence of the NYPL’s map division — deals with maps: Maps @ NYPL is still at an early…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Forbes Smiley’s impact may still be felt at Harvard, where students endure long lines on their way out of the library for security checks, and where Harvard College’s Houghton Library has posted a list of three maps associated with the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

More news about the maps stolen from a 1482 edition of the Cosmographia held in Spain’s national library: Spanish authorities have named a suspect, a 60-year-old Spanish citizen of Uruguayan origin currently residing in Argentina; and the missing maps have…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The University of Georgia’s Map Library seems to be a favourite target of wayward (and inebriated) drivers: it was hit last September (there are photos) and, less spectacularly, earlier this month. Via MAPS-L, where the University’s map librarian reported…  •  Continue reading this entry.

In the July 2007 issue of the Library Student Journal, an article by Joel Kovarsky discusses security and theft-prevention measures in library special collections, and the challenges of keeping rare materials both safe and available. As you might expect, Joel…  •  Continue reading this entry.

When Forbes Smiley was caught red-handed three years ago, it was at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, but it was the map collection at the nearby Sterling Memorial Library — and the state of disrepair of its catalogue…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Global Concepts in Maps is an abbreviated excerpt from a longer educational film about map projections; more information here. I want to see the whole thing, but my, that doesn’t mean it’s good. The risible style of 1950s educational films…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The OCLC WorldMap presents national data about libraries — size of collections, number of users, expenditures, staffing — in a very nice interactive map. (I’m surprised at Russia’s singularly high numbers, though probably shouldn’t be.) Thanks to Richard for…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A short article in today’s Boston Globe about the web site of Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, which launched last fall. The interesting thing, though, is this bit about how maps are scanned for the site: To…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cambridge University Library’s Map Department is getting renovated, beginning in July 2007 and continuing for nine months thereafter. More here. The map room’s current digs, which have not been substantially altered since the 1930s, “will be redesigned to present…  •  Continue reading this entry.

If you follow such things, you’ll know that Ning, which allows people to build their own social-networking sites, released a new iteration recently; Linda Shippert writes to announce that she’s used it to build a site for map librarians….  •  Continue reading this entry.

This sounds like something I would be very interested in, because of my work at the local archives: Accidental Map Librarian Workshops (see also). If only they were taking place somewhere closer than Colorado. Via Maps-L….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Geography Matters, the ESRI blog, has a post up on GIS and map libraries: “While not all institutions manage holdings of this size [the Library of Congress’s map collection], libraries and museums are realizing that a GIS can not only…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Honolulu Advertiser reports on the reopening of a local university’s map library after a devastating flood in 2004 destroyed most of the collection: “More than two years after flood waters damaged or destroyed more than 250,000 maps and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The winter 2006 issue of Documents to the People, the official publication of the Government Documents Round Table of the American Library Association, is a special issue on map librarianship. It’s available for download as a PDF file (3 MB)….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Library of Congress’s Geography and Map Division is a huge resource of digital images of old maps. On Wednesday they reached a symbolic but impressive milestone: they posted their 10,000 digitized map to their web site: Samuel de…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map Center launched its web site this week, map curator Ronald E. Grim announced on MapHist: This initial version of the website includes digital images of approximately 200 maps from the Library’s…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Rare book and map dealer William Reese is donating $100,000 to Yale University — a donation that the university will match and add to with a fundraising campaign. The money will go towards digitizing and cataloguing Yale’s maps: the eventual…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A follow-up article by Val Ross in today’s Globe and Mail about Library and Archives Canada’s attempt to bid on a copy of a map they already owned ascribes it to a lack of corporate memory and staff knowledge: “The…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Remember how Library and Archives Canada was getting set to bid on a 1562 world map by Forlani, one of the first with “Canada” on the map, that was expected to go for $200,000? Well, heh, funny story: it turns…  •  Continue reading this entry.

I did not, alas, pay much attention to the William C. Wonders Map Collection at the University of Alberta when I was studying there (unfortunately, Ph.D. studies in modern French history didn’t allow for mucking around much with maps), but…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Public Library’s map room — the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, rather — and its chief, Alice Hudson, were apparently on the CBS Sunday Morning show yesterday, according to a posting on MAPS-L. See the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

My turn to ask a question. As I mentioned in my review of Kashuba’s Walking with Your Ancestors, I volunteer for a local archive that has a small collection of maps that I should, at some point, catalogue. I’d like…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Indiana University is proposing to close four of its libraries, the Indiana Daily Student, its student newspaper, reports, and one of them is their map library: Heiko Muehr, the branch coordinator of the Map and Geography library, said that he…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A University of Tulsa graduate student has stumbled across rare maps in the university library’s collection, including an 1822 map of North America by Henry S. Tanner, the Tulsa World reports. It turns out that incoming maps and other non-book…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Hartford Courant’s Kim Martineau has been on the Forbes Smiley case for months, and has generally led the reporting on the story (see the Map Thefts category archive for earlier coverage). In today’s edition, she has a story that…  •  Continue reading this entry.

As an experiment, a lot of new links at once: A new Google Earth blog with a rather unwieldy title: Using Google Earth for Earth Science and Remote Sensing (via Ogle Earth). The Prejudice Map is built by querying Google…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Today’s New York Times has a feature about the New York Public Library’s $5-million renovation of its map room, which reopens Thursday as the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division. The map room touts itself as the public library…  •  Continue reading this entry.

According to a press release in October, a $4-million donation to Western Michigan University will establish a Center for the Study of Geographic Change, the purpose of which will be to digitize older maps and aerial photographs. “Geographic change” is…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives is the professional organization for map librarians and cartographic archivists in Canada; their web site lists their published maps and books, and has some resources for map cataloguing. I’ve volunteered to catalogue…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette profiles Clark University map and geography librarian Beverly J. Presley for its “On the Job” feature. A brief but interesting look at map librarianship….  •  Continue reading this entry.

According to this article, the USGS’s shift from paper to digital maps is generating all sorts of potential problems. Some of them are typically bureaucratic: figuring out which agency is responsible for archiving and preserving which data (and paying for…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The web site of the Western Association of Map Libraries includes a handy page linking to map collections, mostly in university libraries, in its coverage area (via mapping.com)….  •  Continue reading this entry.

As I’ve said before, this site’s name is derived from libraries’ practice of naming their map collections map rooms. Matt has a photo of the Seattle Public Library’s map room….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Ending January 15, a public exhibit by the Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library at the University of Texas at Arlington, Mapmaker’s Vision, Beholder’s Eyes: The Art of Maps. “The exhibit explores the elaborate artistry of cartography and seeks to answer…  •  Continue reading this entry.