Charting Time – An Interview with Robert Morris

This is a guest post by Mary Grace Newman, library technician in the Geography and Map Division.

Quotations in the blog post are reflections Robert Morris shared with me in April and May 2025

“If you really like this material… it’s hard to go anywhere else.” Robert Morris, former Acquisitions Specialist at the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, repeatedly traveled to a space that members of the public may tour for a short time, but he surveyed for decades: the stacks of the Geography and Map Division.

“Thirty-eight years ago… I was hired as an Acquisitions Technician.” Over these 38 years, Morris held various positions—Acquisitions Technician, Reference Librarian, Technical Information Specialist, and Acquisitions Specialist—in the Geography and Map Division (G&M), the largest cartographic library in the world.

With 38 years of memories, projects, and contributions to the division, listening to Morris reflect on his time at G&M reveals responsibilities and experiences division staff acquire to ensure G&M engages, inspires, and informs Congress and the American people over their careers. “I worked with some very impactful fellow G&M staff members, impactful for the G&M collections, the Library of Congress, and for the field of geography.”

Entering the G&M Reading Room, readers seek answers to their research questions through the division’s nearly six million cartographic items, a reference collection, and staff members such as Morris before his retirement from the Library in May 2025.

Talking with Morris, his interest and passion for cartography started early. “I studied geography in school, and I’d always liked consulting maps.” Describing his first few days and weeks in the division, Morris said, “I had never seen the variety; the number and types of maps that were coming in every day… We got in a lot, thousands, every month.” Maintaining and adding to the division’s multitude of collections is a career long, meticulous story for Morris.

Map series such as geologic or topographic maps can take map collectors decades to compile as publishers may not release all materials belonging to a map series at the same time. Speaking on one collection of historical maps of the Roman Empire, Morris described, “Over the course of 20 years I would periodically learn of new sheets being published by various countries and immediately order those maps. It’s possible we may hold the most complete collection of this group of maps.”

With numerous globes, thousands of atlases, millions of maps, and digital collections, researchers may wonder what G&M does not hold in its collections. As Acquisitions Specialist, Morris had the duty to recognize gaps in the collections and address them.

Questions asked among division staff acquiring cartographic material usually start with “do we hold it already?” “Does it broaden and strengthen our holdings?” and when purchasing “is it a wise use of taxpayer funds?” Those remain fundamental questions still in this primarily digital world of cartographic production. Morris, following some of the early guidance of his predecessor, Jim Flatness, also asked what are the less represented areas of the world in the collections today? What are the less represented languages in the collections today? These questions led Morris to broaden the geographic coverage of the collections by adding more items from underrepresented areas around the globe.

From opening boxes of maps new to the division in his earlier G&M years to organizing efforts to build broader, more comprehensive collections, Morris’s care and enthusiasm for seeing a variety of collections persisted.

His dedication to researchers and their ability to add to the field of geography is apparent hearing him discuss items he acquired for the division. As Morris sought to collect a rare sixteenth-century portolan chart, he advocated for the Preservation, Research, and Testing Division to use enhanced imaging technology to reveal faded place names on the map and make that enhanced image available to researchers.

While Morris set out to add the enhanced image to the catalog record (with the help of Diane Schug-O’Neill) for more researcher discoveries, working toward that goal also meant facilitating a historic “first” for the Library of Congress: the first time the Library attached a PRTD-enhanced image of an item to a catalog record. “I just thought it would be a good idea for researchers to better read the faded place names. I’m very happy to have been a part of that.”

Discussing some details of various acquisitions, Morris conveyed an appreciation for the process of map collecting and map making. In reference to the earliest globe pair in G&M’s collections, Morris said, “Having the opportunity to buy items like that is few and far between.”

Listening to Morris talk about acquiring rare materials also meant listening to Morris describe moments of joy and appreciation for making something that was previously unavailable available for all.

With nearly six million cartographic items from multiple publishing sources, sometimes the division is not always privy to why a particular map was made. However, Morris mentioned one collection – the Literary Map Paintings Collection – in which “back in the 1950s three commercial artists were hired to create maps based upon classic novels. This project was the brainchild of an Ohio based printing press manufacturer that put these images in calendars sent out to clients.” G&M holds 10 of the 12 original painted maps the artists made. “It would certainly be nice to add the missing two – see I’m still thinking about completing G&M collections.”

Reflecting on that acquisition, which was a donation, Morris noted, “It was just nice to be a part of something where everybody (the retired printing press engineer, the successor company that held the works, and G&M) had the strong desire to have them safeguarded here at the Library.” The maps and the acquisition of them for the Library of Congress showed how an investment in time, art, and imagination can reveal geospatial stories for all.

Similar to a small-scale map showing a limited selection of features out of a geographic area, this post only featured a few items to help reveal 38 years of contributions to the division. Many more stories such as the time Morris left G&M for a different position and quickly returned, memories of colleagues and their G&M experiences together, the years of leading the Italian language table at the Library, and the experience of working in G&M when the Library acquired the Waldseemüller 1507 world map in 2003 are not told in this post.

However, the contributions Morris made to G&M will remain as staff members continue to share collections he accessioned, referenced, and acquired for generations of staff members and researchers.