Growing up in a Brazilian-American household, I’ve long appreciated the delicious versatility of the Atlantic cod, scientific name Gadus morhua, known to the Portuguese-speaking world as bacalhau in its preferred salted and dried form. It was only when I began working as a map librarian, however, that I saw how powerful cod truly was. Centuries …
This post features a qibla compass that was recently acquired for the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The qibla compass was made in Turkey during the Ottoman Empire.
Join us online May 2, 2024, for a Spring Presentation with two conversations on indigenous cartography. At 3:00pm Lauren Beck, Canada Research Chair in Intercultural Encounter and Professor of Visual and Material Culture Studies at Mount Allison University, Canada, will discuss Extractive Place Naming Practices in Early Modern North America. At 5:00pm S. Max Edelson, …
Copperplate printing was a major method of map production for several hundred years. This post explores the history of printing maps with engraved copper plates, featuring several example maps and photographs of copper plates from the Geography and Map Division collections. This is the first post in a new series about map printing and creation, Fabricating the World.
This post includes images of various types of wine maps that were published during the 19th and early 20th centuries. A brief history of viticulture is also provided.
A picture of a skull and crossbones marks the location of a special collection in the Geography and Map Division. The collection consists of wreck charts published by U.S. federal government agencies, treasure maps made by famous cartographers during the 18th and 19th centuries, and treasure maps published by commercial companies during the mid -20th …
The story of the naming of America has been told before – not surprisingly considering the object central to the story, Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map, is one of the most important treasures in the Geography and Map Division. The name was bestowed by the mapmaker to show his support for Amerigo Vespucci’s argument that …
