A little more time!

So last week I was told that the French exhibit was being moved back because they wanted a past exhibit, that features a lot of interesting objects from the collections, to be there while the city will be busy with graduation and Obama. This is good news in a way because we still haven't been able to speak with any of the professors. At this point in the research I have pretty much looked at every map (not atlas) of France in the Map Library and have taken pictures of those that I find interesting. We've taken into consideration the fact that some maps may be too large to exhibit, and have picked out interesting maps that are within books that could be laid out to exhibit. I have spoken with Cathy Baker (the conservator) who has agreed to involve me in the process of exhibition prep and we have arranged a time when I can go to the Buhr Facilities on South Campus to check out the lab and learn a bit about the process involved in preparing objects for exhibit. I have continued to research French maps in the collection and have begun creating a spreadsheet of the maps that I have looked at and any notes that I may want to refer to later. I have made this accessible as a google document so that the other intern, Molly, and I can both add to the same document and prevent us from looking at the same maps as her exhibit is focused on Paris. Karl gave us a few books to read about France and the early history of travel within the country to pull quotes from that we could potentially use in the exhibit. There were a few new acquisitions to the library as well, which could potentially add to the exhibit depending on what direction we decide to go (one was a French map of India, so we could perhaps focus on the French outposts for a portion on the exhibit). At least I will be able to work a little bit longer to better develop the French exhibit and I will be able to help out on the conservation process for the old exhibit coming in!