Filled with heavy topics of war and occupation, War map: pictorial and propaganda map collection 1900-1950 contains maps and messages that frequently are pointed, unapologetic, and echo the anger and desperation of nations at war. The collection of 180 maps typifies how cartographs were used to influence popular opinion and garner support for military and political efforts …
Los Angeles is world famous for its sunny beaches and Hollywood glamour, but did you know that the California metropolis has a long history as a booming oil city? At both large and small scales, maps help tell the stories of this often forgotten part of the Los Angeles’s past and present. The first commercially …
The latest Story Maps from the Library of Congress detail some of the fascinating adventures and technological innovations of early photography! Story Maps are immersive, interactive web applications that showcase the incredible stories of Library of Congress collections through text, images, multimedia, and interactive maps. You can find all Library of Congress Story Maps at …
At this time last year, I shared a blog post reviewing maps that had been newly digitized that year. To celebrate the end of 2018 and to ring in 2019, I decided to continue the tradition and take a look back at the lists of maps that were scanned this past year and choose just …
As we learned in my previous blog, surveying is the art of measuring land. During the 18th century colonial surveying was relatively crude. A fixed “beginning point” such as a tree or a rock was established as the starting point for the survey. A 66 foot long chain, commonly known as a Gunters Chain, was …
The map above shows the voting status for American women in 1914. Sadly, after of years of fighting for voting rights most American women had only partial suffrage or no suffrage at all. The exhibit Shall Not Be Denied opened June 4, 2019 at the Library of Congress. It explores the struggles that American women …
During World War I, the most hazardous place to be, relatively speaking, was not on the battlefield, but inside a German U-boat. Throughout the war, Germany deployed 375 Unterseebooten, i.e. U-boats or submarines; 202 were lost in action, or about fifty-four percent. Similarly, of the 17,000 sailors who served in them, about 5,100 were lost …
This is the first of two posts outlining traditional 18th and 19th surveying methods. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, surveying is the art and science of measuring land. More precisely, it is “a means of making relatively large-scale, accurate measurements of the Earth’s surface.” The authoritative 18th century treatise on surveying, entitled “The Compleat Surveyor or …
The Library of Congress is proud to celebrate GIS Day on Wednesday, November 13th with a showcase event: In the Shadows of Notre Dame: Geographic Information Science, 3D Mapping and Cultural Heritage Preservation. The all-day series of discussions will be held from 8:30am to 3:30pm in Room LJ-119 on the first floor of the Thomas …
