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Posted by: Julie Stoner
An exploration of the thousands of maps held in the Geography and Map Division that are photocopies, including those from many 20th century wars.
Posted in: 19th century cartography, 20th century cartography, Guest Posts, Series: Fabricating the World
Posted by: Julie Stoner
A blog exploring the hottest place on earth, Death Valley California.
Posted in: 20th century cartography, Physical Geography, Series: Extremities of the Earth
Posted by: Julie Stoner
This is a guest post by Geography and Map Division summer intern, Wayne Hastings, who worked on processing and housing the John Parr Snyder Collection. Imagine this. During the summer of 1972, the United States was in the midst of one of the most wildly impressive eras of technological and scientific development – the Space …
Posted in: 20th century cartography, Guest Posts
Posted by: Julie Stoner
This is a guest post by Rachel Trent, Digital Collections and Automation Coordinator in the Geography and Map Division. Every time you look at an online image of a historical map, what you’re viewing is really just a spreadsheet of numbers. Or more likely, three spreadsheets, one each for red, green, and blue (the technical way to …
Posted in: 20th century cartography, 21st century cartography
Posted by: Julie Stoner
On the Geography and Map Division home page, we keep a list of maps newly placed online. As has become tradition (see previous Year in Review posts), to celebrate the end of a year and to ring in the new, I take a look back at the digitized maps that are now available online from …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, 20th century cartography, Series: A Year in Review
Posted by: Julie Stoner
Please join us for the second session in a new series of virtual orientations for the Geography and Map Division, focusing on our collection of fire insurance maps! Date: Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 Time: 3:00-4:00 pm (Eastern) Location: Zoom Register Here Reference librarians Amelia Raines and Julie Stoner will present an introduction to the fire insurance maps housed …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, 20th century cartography, Geography and Map Division
Posted by: Julie Stoner
This is a guest post by Iris Taylor, a senior cataloging specialist in the Geography and Map Division. It is a common belief that you can acquire inspiration from a variety of people, places, or things. Seanna Tsung, a Library of Congress staff member, recently uncovered a unique collection of maps in the Geography and …
Posted in: 20th century cartography, African American History, Biography, Guest Posts, Women's 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: 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