Posts from — September 2007

In a press release today, Harvard University announces Harvard Map Collection Digitizes Historic Cambridge and Boston Atlases.

Newly digitized atlases of Cambridge include the years 1873, 1885, 1886, 1894, 1900, 1903, and 1916. Due to copyright law, the Map Collection can’t digitize beyond that. Digitized years for Boston atlases include 1867, 1873, 1885, 1887, and 1902, each with seven volumes. In fact, the 1867 item was the very first fire insurance atlas of Boston, made by Daniel Sanborn, a local surveyor from Somerville who founded the Sanborn Map Company.

Digitized maps from the Map Collection can be viewed by searching in HOLLIS using “Harvard Map Collection digital maps” as the title search term.

The digitization of the Boston and Cambridge atlases is part of a larger Library Digital Initiative Project that the division calls “Imaging the Urban Environment” and that involves maps from 30 cities around the world. “We’re going to start with the earliest map of each city we have, usually somewhere in the 1570s or 1580s and then digitally capture another map of the same city approximately every 50 years, up to 1900 or so. These can then be used by students, faculty, and researchers and scholars around the world to see a nice time-series analysis for these various cities.”

Via MapHist

The online version of Princeton’s  current map exhibition, “To the Mountains of the Moon: Mapping African Exploration, 1541-1880” is available for our viewing pleasure.

The exhibition draws from the cartographic and rare book resources of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections of Princeton University Library, documenting the evolution of the map of Africa, from 1541 to 1880 with expedition maps, illustrations, and words of explorers.

Via MapHist

An effort is underway at Newburyport, Massachusetts City Hall to make a digital record of documents and books found in its vaults.

Roslin and Ralph Esposito have made it their mission to catalog the items in their spare time. Ralph is a retired land surveyor and museum curator.

“No one had a listing of what we had, never mind an index,” he said. “I thought it would be interesting to find out what we have.”

Among the items discoverd so far: a copy of a map from the 1700s that shows all the land between the Atlantic Ocean and West Newbury, and maps used as insurance surveys. The insurance maps, dating from 1906, depict each property and the footprint of each home on the linen-lined paper. The buildings are colored in with water paints, depending on whether they are a business or a private residence. Next to each business is a description of what fire safety controls are in place to protect the building.

Read more about the Espositos’ work in this article.

Festival of Maps Chicago opens November 2, 2007. Organized by a board of 10 members, including former Rand McNally chairman Andrew McNally IV, it marks a four-year effort to acquire 129 maps that span centuries. The maps include everything from clay tablets to satellite imagery. Chicago is the first city to host a major maps exhibition in 50 years, with more than 25 participating museums and institutions hosting cartography-related exhibitions, lectures and events focused on the themes of exploration, discovery and mapping.

An article in the Chicago Sun-Times about the Festival states:

The public showing of 129 maps will include a jaw-dropping variety of antiquities and one-of-a-kind finds, maps of imaginary worlds and the latest in map-making and location-finding technologies.

The museum worked with Chicago-based digital map-maker Navteq to make maps come alive.

The Chicago Botanic Garden is one of the Chicago area cultural institutions participating in the event. Its display will feature maps revealing the global travels of plant explorers will be on display in the Lenhardt Library located in the Regenstein Center at the Chicago Botanic Garden. This exhibit:

…allows visitors to enter the age of plant exploration through the pages of beautiful maps found in the Library’s Rare Book Collection, which holds approximately 3,000 titles from the 15th to the 19th centuries.

You can read more about the Chicago Botanic Garden exhibition in this article.

[tags]Antique Maps, Festival of Maps Chicago, Antique Map Exhibits, Cartography Lectures[/tags]

I received the following e-mail this morning and in an effort to get the word out, I am posting it here:

Please be advised that on 20 August an atlas was stolen from a private premises in Normandy in France.
The atlas contains 48 maps in contemp. colours of all parts of the world by Hugo Allardt and F.de Wit.

The atlas has a manuscript index and is bound in contemp. brown calf.
A list of the included maps is to be found at
http://www.loeb-larocque.com/ENGstolen_atlas.html

Please contact us if this atlas will be, or has been offered to you:

Béatrice Loeb-Larocque

Librairie Loeb-Larocque
31 rue de Tolbiac, 75013 Paris France
Tél/FAX +33 (0)1 44.24.85.80
By appointment only / Sur rendez-vous

http://www.loeb-larocque.com/

Cartes Géographiques Anciennes – Livres – Estampes

[tags]antique maps, atlases, map theft, stolen maps[/tags]

The sixth Paris Map Fair will be held November 10th, 2007 at the Hotel Ambassador, in the heart of Paris. More details can be found at Map Fair.com.