Tag: libraries

The Library of Lost Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Book cover: The Library of Lost Maps

When it comes to books that present the maps of a single library or museum—take, for example, Debbie Hall’s Treasures from the Map Room, about the Bodleian, or Tom Harper’s Atlas: A World of Maps from the British Library—there seems to be a standard, curatorial template, one that focuses on full-colour reproductions of the maps, each of which is accompanied by a short explanatory text. The maps, as objects, are the point.

The Library of Lost Maps (Bloomsbury, 2025) is about the maps held in the Map Room of University of College London. But author James Cheshire is doing something quite different here. Partly this is because UCL is neither the Bodleian nor the British Library. Their holdings are not remotely similar. There’s no equivalent of the Gough Map or the Selden Map here; the maps are more modern (19th and 20th century) and less rare and singular. UCL’s Map Library was a working map library, used by its staff for teaching and research, rather than something more curatorial.

But what the maps at UCL do have is stories attached—about how they were made, and about how they came to be in UCL’s hands. The Library of Lost Maps is simultaneously a story of the early days of UCL and its role in broadening education in Britain, its role as a repository for so many maps being produced during the twentieth century’s bloodiest conflicts, and its uncertain future as that role of map repository is increasingly seen as obsolete.

Continue reading “The Library of Lost Maps” →

WCVB’s Chronicle Looks at Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Looks like Boston TV channel WCVB’s Chronicle newsmagazine turned its attention to maps last week: there were profiles of Map Center owner Andrew Middleton, cartographer Andy Woodruff and the Leventhal Map Center, plus pieces on brain mapping, forensic mapping and MassGIS. (The clips are also available on the Chronicle YouTube channel.)

Above & Below: Cartography Beyond Terrain

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Poster from the Above & Below exhibition at Stanford’s David Rumsey Map Center.

Above & Below: Cartography Beyond Terrain, an exhibition at Stanford Library’s David Rumsey Map Center that launched in conjunction with this year’s Ruderman Conference, “explores how cartography depicts the depths of the Earth, the ocean floor, weather systems, the solar system, and even the seemingly intangible internet—anything but the thin boundary that divides land and sky that we tend to associate with maps.” Free admission, on display through 27 February 2026.

More on Secret Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Doug Specht has a piece about the British Library’s exhibition Secret Maps in The Conversation. “The exhibition does not shy away from difficult topics. Maps tracing the infrastructure of apartheid, or those produced to facilitate war or surveillance, sit alongside playful artefacts such as the iconic Where’s Wally? books. The effect is to remind us that all mapping, whether for adventure, statecraft, or protest, is fundamentally about control: who gets to see, who gets seen and who decides.”

I’d forgotten that past British Library exhibitions (London: A Life in Maps, Magnificent Maps) generated all kinds of coverage. This might not be the last piece we see on this exhibition.

Previously: New British Library Exhibition: Secret Maps; Secret Maps, the Book.

New British Library Exhibition: Secret Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Banner illustration from the British Library’s Secret Maps page.
British Library

A new exhibition opened at the British Library this weekend: Secret Maps.

Maps have always been more than just tools for navigation – in the hand of governments, groups and individuals, maps create and control knowledge. In Secret Maps, we trace the levels of power, coercion and secrecy that lie behind maps from the 14th century to the present day, and uncover the invisible forces that draw and distort the world around us.

Some of the maps on display reveal hidden landscapes, offering insight into places long forgotten or erased from official histories. Others are purposefully deceptive, designed to protect treasures, mask strategic locations, or reshape the way we see the world. This exhibition uncovers each of their individual secrets, revealing their hidden purposes and power.

The exhibition runs until 18 January 2016. Tickets cost £20. There are also a number of talks, tours, workshops and other events affiliated with the exhibition; they’re listed at the bottom of the exhibition’s web page.

Update: There’s also a book.

Update #2: Strike action by British Library workers may affect opening hours. See this page for information.

The World Turned Upside Down and Other Globes: A Roundup

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
The World Turned Upside Down, a 13-foot globe sculpture by Mark Wallinger, on the campus of the London School of Economics, surrounded by a few passersby with cameras. The globe shows political borders; the South Pole is at the top. Photo by Geoff Henson, used under a Creative Commons licence.
Geoff Henson (Flickr). Creative Commons BY-ND licence.

Mark Wallinger’s World Turned Upside Down, a 13-foot globe on the LSE campus with the South Pole on top, generated controversy (and vandalism) after its unveiling in 2019 for how it handled contested borders: it shows Lhasa as a capital, Taiwan as a separate country, and omitted Palestine. I mean, it’s on a university campus: controversy about such things was inevitable. Via Mappery; more at Atlas Obscura and Brilliant Maps.

Mappery also points to a 19th-century globular clock that shows the sun’s position at noon on the globe, which I find awfully intriguing, which is to say I want one.

The Library of Congress is changing how it stores its rare globes, replacing acrylic vitrines (heavy, bulky, and potentially off-gassing compounds that put the globes at risk) with archival cardboard cases, which are less sexy but more practical—we’re talking about storage, not display. I’m actually surprised that rare globes had essentially been stored in display cases.

Allmaps Loses Digital Humanities Grant

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Leventhal Center has posted a statement on the future of the Allmaps project—Allmaps is a georeferencing tool for digital images—now that its Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from the NEH has been terminated, like so many other NEH grants. “Although we’re disappointed that the U.S. government is backing away from supporting projects like Allmaps, LMEC and AGSL will keep working to support the Allmaps project (and we’re thankful that it has support from European agencies).”

A Map of Map Institutions

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Andrew Middleton, the owner of the Map Center in Pawtucket, RI (previously), has put together a map of map stores and non-commercial map institutions (archives, libraries, etc.). Comment on Bluesky to suggest other places.

Earlier this month, Andrew posted about the state of the map store, wherein he lays out what makes up his business and where he’d like to go from here. (Mind you, that was before this post and this post went all sorts of viral.)

Online Exhibition Introduces Cincinnati Library’s Map Holdings

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Plan of Cincinnati and Vicinity (1860)
Plan of Cincinnati and Vicinity (S. Augustus Mitchell, 1860). Map, 24×25 cm. CHPL.

How many libraries host map collections that you might be unaware of? The Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library’s online exhibition, Landscape and Layers, is an introduction to that library’s map holdings, which per the blog post include 19th- and early 20th-century maps of the city, Sanborn fire insurance maps, and early maps of Ohio.

Newberry Library Digitizes Novacco Collection

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Untitled cordiform map in which a world map is placed inside a fool’s cap. 1590. Franco Novacco Map Collection, Newberry Library.
Franco Novacco Map Collection, Newberry Library

The Newberry Library has announced that it has digitized the 754 maps comprising its Franco Novacco Map Collection, which includes Italian maps from the 16th and 17th centuries.

A large portion of the collection includes world maps of all sizes, ranging from functional to more experimental. One 1590 cordiform map, for example, places the heart-shaped world inside of a fool’s cap, resulting in an unsettling visual commentary on previous conceptions of world geography. A 1555 map, alternatively, presents the world in gores, or segmented parts, which can be cut out and pasted onto a sphere to create a globe. This blend of art, science, and history is at the heart of the Franco Novacco Collection. […]

The Newberry Library acquired the Novacco Collection from the Venetian map collector Franco Novacco himself in 1967. Since then, the maps have only been available for viewing on-site in the Newberry’s reading rooms. In early 2022, the Newberry received generous funding from Mr. Rudy L. Ruggles, Jr. and Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps to begin digitizing the entirety of the collection.

The Newberry Library is in Chicago.

The How and Why of Measuring Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Matthew Edney poses an interesting question about measuring the physical size—i.e., the length and width—of paper maps: how do we do it, and why are we doing it? “There’s a philosophical question (how do we construe this thing that we need to measure?), the question of precision (how finely do we measure?), and a pragmatic question (what use is to be made of whatever measurements are recorded?), all of which influence the selection of which part(s) of an image are to be measured. Add to that a great deal of historical inconsistency in practice, and the question becomes difficult to answer.”

A History of the Harvard University Institute of Geographical Exploration

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

“The Harvard University Institute of Geographical Exploration was one of the first and most well-wrought private institutions in aerial photography in the first half of the 20th century. Its short institutional life at Harvard was replete with materials, stories and scandal, and its pieces remain scattered today throughout the Harvard Archives and Libraries system and beyond.” Ana Luiza Nicolae tracks down what records, photos and other materials can still be found on the Harvard campus that once belonged to Alexander H. Rice’s HUIGE, which was not closely affiliated with Harvard’s geography department but was shut down at roughly the same time.