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!