Top of page

Archive: 2021 (46 Posts)

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Excavating Archaeology II: Reading the Cylindrical Book

Posted by: John Hessler

This is the second post in a new monthly series called Excavating Archaeology, which will feature selections and research from the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology & History of the Early Americas, housed in the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress. Time and money are spent in collecting the remains …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Posted by: Julie Stoner

This is a guest post by Kelly Bilz, Librarian-in-Residence in the Geography and Map Division. From Jules Verne’s novel (the title of which I borrowed for this blog) to the 1956 movie The Mole People, many have wondered what happens under the surface of the Earth. And many people, from scientists to storytellers, have come up with …

A picture of Mars with two aliens looking at earth through a telescope.

Observing the Fire Star: Selected Maps of the Red Planet

Posted by: Cynthia Smith

Mars receives more media attention than the other planets in our solar system. People are obsessed with the classic novels The War of the Worlds and The Martian Chronicles. The movies Total Recall and The Martian were huge hits. Mars has polar ice caps, dry river beds and extinct volcanoes, and Martian landscape posters have …

[The road, near Passanaur, Groussie, (i.e., Georgia), Russia, taken between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].   Detroit Publishing Company Archives, Prints and Photographs Division

A Unique View of the Georgian Military Road

Posted by: Mike Klein

Few journeys offer the prospect of so pleasant a destination or more luxurious accommodations than the Stairway to Heaven. Those of us not lucky enough to secure a ticket on that ride will have to settle for more mundane adventures, perhaps something with less delicate transportation facilities and sparser lodgings. With meagre options at hand …

Georeferencing: Moving Analog Maps into Modern-Day GIS

Posted by: Meagan Snow

Have you ever wondered how historic maps can be used with today’s modern mapping technologies? One of the ways in which analog maps can be used with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is through a process called georeferencing. Georeferencing is the process of adding digital spatial reference information to an otherwise non-spatial image. Adding spatial reference …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

More than a Metaphor: Maps of Mammoth Cave

Posted by: Julie Stoner

This is a guest post by Kelly Bilz, Librarian-in-Residence in the Geography and Map Division. Beneath the surface of west-central Kentucky winds a complex system of rivers and grottos known as Mammoth Cave. Named “mammoth” for its size, the cave doesn’t have much to do with the creature—although mammoths and mastodons did live in Kentucky near Big …