At the dawn of the 20th century, hundreds of U.S. citizens dreamed of starting a new life—and a new U.S. territory—on Cuba’s Isle of Pines at what would be known as the McKinley Colonies. A newly cataloged collection of promotional plat maps for this short-lived project shows just how big the founders’ ambitions were, and the role maps played in selling the idea.
This is a guest post by Jackie Coleburn, Rare Book Cataloger at the Library of Congress. Did Philip Lee Phillips study Peter Parley geography books when he was a child? This is a detail of his personal history we may never know. Philip Lee Phillips (1857–1924) was the first Superintendent of Maps when the Hall …
This is a guest post by Rachel Trent, Digital Collections and Automation Coordinator in the Geography and Map Division. The image below is of a TIFF file, but not just any TIFF. Hidden inside are coordinates that bind the image to a specific place on Earth. For every pixel in the image, an estimated latitude …
This is a guest post by Diane Schug-O’Neill, Digital Conversion Coordinator, in the Geography and Map Division. In 1925, Silas Sandgreen was commissioned by the Library of Congress to create a map of Disko Bugt (also seen as Disko Bay), Greenland. Disko Bay is a large bay located on the western coast of Greenland, along …
