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Posted by: Cynthia Smith
The Napoleonic Wars began in 1803 and lasted until Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815. The Geography and Map Division holds numerous maps of the battle. I am sharing images of a few of my favorites. I would like to begin with a brief summary of Napoleon’s final battle and the events that led to …
Posted in: European History, Military History
Posted by: Julie Stoner
This is a guest post by Kelly Bilz, Librarian-in-Residence in the Geography and Map Division. If you’re buying a souvenir map, would you rather it be “historical,” or “hysterical”? The Lindgren Brothers aimed for the latter in their set of maps of American landmarks. With their distinct style—a yellow background, a blue (or sometimes red) border, and …
Posted in: Guest Posts
Posted by: Julie Stoner
This is a guest post by Kelly Bilz, Librarian-in-Residence in the Geography and Map Division. Even though Latin had fallen out of vernacular use after the fall of Rome (and began to evolve into the modern Romance languages), it lived on in its written form, becoming the lingua franca, so to speak, of scholarship. In …
Posted in: 17th century cartography, 18th century cartography, Guest Posts
Posted by: Cynthia Smith
This post focuses on three decorative 19th century fans from the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The art of Asian fan making dates to ancient times. According to Gonglin Qian, author of Chinese Fans: Artistry and Aesthetics the earliest Chinese fan that has been found dates from 475 to 221 BC. It was …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, Asian History
Posted by: Ed Redmond
Between 1755 and 1775, over the course of just twenty years, three seminal maps of North America were published in London, even though those responsible for the maps never left England! These three maps, discussed in more detail below, were prepared for a British audience in an attempt to reinforce opinions regarding British control of …
Posted in: 18th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Julie Stoner
This is a guest post by Rachel Trent, Digital Collections and Automation Coordinator in the Geography and Map Division. Interested in bulk downloading maps from the Library of Congress’s online collections? Need a corpus of historical map images to build a training dataset for your machine learning model? Looking to learn more about Python or APIs? Curious …
Posted in: 21st century cartography, Guest Posts
Posted by: Julie Stoner
This is a guest post by Kathy Hart, Head of the Research Access and Collection Development Section in the Geography and Map Division. Libraries and museums often feature maps and related geographic content in digital and analog, large or small exhibits, displays and workshops. When considering the variety of materials available, how does one select …
Posted in: Guest Posts
Posted by: Julie Stoner
Every month on our home page, we provide a monthly list of maps that have been scanned and added to the online collections of the Geography and Map Division. As has become tradition (previous Year in Review posts), to celebrate the end of a year and to ring in the new, I take a look …
Posted in: Geography and Map Division, Series: A Year in Review
Posted by: Ryan Moore
Filled with heavy topics of war and occupation, War map: pictorial and propaganda map collection 1900-1950 contains maps and messages that frequently are pointed, unapologetic, and echo the anger and desperation of nations at war. The collection of 180 maps typifies how cartographs were used to influence popular opinion and garner support for military and political efforts …
Posted in: Military History, Reference Guides