My First Blog

I applied for this internship because it seemed relevant to my field and it sounded pretty interesting. I will be honest and say that I actually didn't know a lot about the Maps Library or what exactly I'd be involved in doing if I were to work there. I've been to the Maps Library once before in an Art History class on Medeival societies that I took my sophomore year. We went to go check out the Hereford Map, which was a map we had been discussing in class. It wasn't the real Hereford Map, but it was a copy and it was definitely very cool to see it in person.

The first day at the internship, Karl (my internship coordinator) gave me a stack of books about maps to look through. At first it seemed a little tedious and boring, but I started to make my own observations about map making and how our perceptions of the world have changed over time. Surveying land and collecting enough information to create a map must have been a very tedious and hard job to do without the capabilities of aerial views. I begun to wonder if most map makers cheated a bit by copying off of each other. And then I realized that that was absolutely true, as some of the earlier representations of the world are so far off, and it wouldn't be a coincidence that many of the maps shared some characteristics. It's easy to look at these maps and laugh at how far off they are from the truth, but I can honestly say that being a cartographer is not on my to-do list and I have a lot of respect for those who fronteired the field.

Every third Thursday of the month, the Maps Library holds an open house, and that happened to be yesterday when I went in to work. The focus of the open house was on islands, and it was my responsibility to use Google Earth to find some interesting islands to potentially pull out maps for the open house. Karl took us over to a cabinet holding the special collections, and nonchalantly began to search through Napoleonic maps from the Clinton collection. I can't help but see these maps as pieces of art, and historical importance. When he told me I could start looking through them, I was amazed. I was worried I might rip them or hurt them and Karl reassured me that they are much sturdier than I'd think. I guess this is what it's like to work within the museum world... maybe someday my reverence for these objects will dissipate, but at this point that seems impossible.