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Posted by: Cynthia Smith
Below is an image of an embroidered map from the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The name of the embroiderer, Sophia Mason, is stitched at the bottom of the map; the year 1802 is printed beneath her name. From the 18th to the early 19th century, American and British school girls received their …
Posted in: 18th century cartography, 19th century cartography, Women's History
Posted by: Mike Klein
A few years ago a colleague of mine in the map division wrote a blog about maps of North Korea’s enigmatic capital of Pyongang. One of the maps, published by the Japanese Tourist Bureau in the 1920s, extols the city, renamed by the Japanese as Heijo, as a model of modernization and economic prosperity. At …
Posted in: 20th century cartography, Asian History, Military History
Posted by: Julie Stoner
With the first liftoff of Orville and Wilbur Wright into the sky in 1903, the world dramatically changed in an instant, and it did not take long for the implications of flight to be applied to the world of cartography. The value of aerial mapping became readily apparent with the advent of World War I. …
Posted in: 20th century cartography, City Histories
Posted by: John Hessler
This post is part of the series Excavating Archaeology, which features selections from, and research on, the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology & History of the Early Americas and related collections, housed in the Geography and Map Division and in the Rare Book & Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. Break …
Posted in: Exploring the Early Americas, Kislak Collection, Series: Excavating Archaeology
Posted by: Cynthia Smith
The French cartographer and engraver, Nicolas de Fer, was a master at creating maps that were works of art. The maps that he published were printed during the Baroque period when the decorative arts were characterized by ornate detail. De Fer’s detailed maps and atlases were valued more for their decorative content than their geographical …
Posted in: 17th century cartography, 18th century cartography, Biography
Posted by: John Hessler
This post is part of a series called Excavating Archaeology, which features selections from, and research on, the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology & History of the Early Americas and related collections, housed in the Geography and Map Division and in the Rare Book & Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. …
Posted in: Exploring the Early Americas, Kislak Collection, Series: Excavating Archaeology
Posted by: John Hessler
This post is part of a series called Excavating Archaeology, which highlights selections from, and research on, the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology & History of the Early Americas and related materials, housed in the Geography and Map Division, and in the Rare Book & Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. …
Posted in: Exploring the Early Americas, Kislak Collection, Series: Excavating Archaeology
Posted by: Meagan Snow
Today it’s easy to check the weather without even leaving the house: hourly predictions for rain, wind, temperature, and humidity are available to most of us through our phones at the touch of a button. Warnings for severe weather flash across our screens to help keep us safe – but how did we get here? …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, 20th century cartography, Geographic Information Science
Posted by: Julie Stoner
The most heavily used collection in the Geography and Map Division are the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, a collection of large-scale, building level maps, dating from 1867 to the present which depict the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of some 12,000 cities and towns in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The Sanborn collection includes about …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, 20th century cartography, City Histories