historical maps and preparing for the weird and wonderful map day

We still have yet to speak with any of the experts who will be determining what goes in the exhibit. It's a little frustrating, but at the same time, we'll have a really good idea about what we have in the collection when it comes time to select the pieces. I was able to sit down with Mike Creech who is in charge of the library website spotlight, which highlights different objects in the University's collection. This was interesting, because his job is essentially what I'm doing with my blog for another class, which could eventually be tied into my internship here at the Map Library.

On Tuesday, I got to finally meet the books conservator, Cathy Baker, which was really pretty awesome. She's super nice and gave me a lot of advice about pursuing a career in conservation. I asked her a few basic questions about paper conservation as it differs from the object conservation I've been involved in and I've decided that I'd like to learn more about the process. She has offered for me to come into the conservation lab at sometime so she can show me around, and I'm hoping that I might be able to work with her when we begin conserving maps for the upcoming exhibit on France.

On Thursday Karl took us over to the Kelsey Museum where he pointed out some interesting components of the museum... such as the type of floor, cases, and labels. We discussed the layout of the museum and thought critically about the way it presented information to us. I suppose I'm a little biased because I love the Kelsey Museum, but the design of an exhibit and museum should be compared to creating art as there are limitless options. I began to think more critically about the museums I've seen and started to wonder why generally museums present items in a similar manner. You really must consider the audience, and while some information may seem extremely interesting to you, it may not be the same for others, so we'll have to think of ways to grab people's attention when designing the exhibit.

Making some progress

So, this coming week is the week when we'll be able to start talking with the professors helping to design the exhibit. This past week I spent some time researching the history of France, because I actually don't know very much about European history. I consolidated my notes into three pages, so I would never consider myself an expert on French history, but at least I know some of the main points! I thought that it might be helpful to try and organize the maps I've found based on what period of history they may align to. In order to do this, I needed a better understanding of the history of France. I did find some old historic maps of France that I think are particularly interesting. I found one map of France from the 1890's representing France during the Roman empire, which may be beneficial if we decide to organize the exhibit based on history.

There are also maps representing France during the Napoleonic empire. It seems that we may be able to find the the most interesting maps relating to the time of Napoleon. Napoleon is a good option because we have maps from his time, including military maps. Napoleon was also responsible for attempting to create a French empire, which would involve maps of other areas of Europe and even the Napoleonic expeditions to Egypt, which may be a good reason to discuss options with the Kelsey museum, as the expeditions to Egypt were archaeological.

Karl pulled out a pile of old maps from the rare maps folio and told us that they hadn't been catalogued yet and we should read through them and help him name, date, and measure them. These maps were mostly of the city of Paris, and were very interesting (possible ideas for the Paris exhibit?) One of them had several "x's" marking out points of interest, and I'd be very interested to see what these "x's" actually mark out. Maybe that can be a project for next week. Karl has told me that I'll be meeting with the books conservators to discuss treatment of several potential maps, and I hope I'll be able to do that this week because I've been really eager to meet the conservators!

Browsing the collection

This past week was especially exciting as I've become better and better at searching through our collection. Not only am I getting pretty good at using Mirlyn, but I've figured out how to find things in the Map Library, which can be especially confusing. It was nice going to the Special Collections and even the Clements Library because they brought out the books for you, but sometimes you have no idea what you're going to find in them so I felt a little bit bad about having them search for all of these books.

I asked Karl to try and better explain how things are organized in the Map Library, and I'm glad I did this because I now have probably the most efficient way of finding "interesting" and "old" maps within our collection. Generally, maps of France were put in the same drawers, and their call number usually includes the date of their creation. I can open a drawer of maps and efficiently look at all the maps of France that predate the 1900's, which is a lot of maps to look through, but it's a lot of fun! I never know what I'm going to see when I open up a folder, and it's pretty exciting to see the result.

Supposedly Karl talked to some of the professors last week about the exhibit, and I'm supposed to meet with some professors tomorrow. I'm pretty optimistic about getting some real work done of the exhibit very soon!