Which Way is North?
by Amy J. Barnes
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James Monteith,
Barnes’ Complete Geography
Maine edition (New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1886)
Smith Collection
The map library’s collection of school geographies provides a rich source for understanding the attitudes,
ambitions, and priorities of Americans in the 19th century. The textbook publishing industry grew in tandem
with the growth of education and literacy after the civil war. Heavy on factual description and emphasizing
cultural and racial identities, this 1886 Maine edition of Barnes Complete Geography is a particularly
fine example illustrated with figures of natives of the western hemisphere along the borders.
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Greely High School teacher Rick Yager wanted to bring to life the lessons he was teaching his freshmen honors students, so he took them on a recent field trip to the University of Southern Maine's Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education.
The 45 students saw examples of the different types of maps made during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries before and after the invention of the Gutenberg press. They also learned that maps of the period had far more to tell than the distances from Point A to Point B. “Most kids don't have any exposure to historical maps, and therefore, have no appreciation that maps are telling a story in a lot of ways,” Yager said.
“I think they were impressed by how much information could be conveyed on a map, and to learn that maps could be used as symbols of one's own personal power and wealth, as well as legitimate tools to help understand the world,” he added.
Sharing the stories that historical maps contain has been the focus and passion of Dr. Harold L. Osher and his wife, Peggy L. Osher, long before the map library opened its doors in 1994. “You can read about events, but maps let you see them, and you see them through contemporary eyes and you see them the way somebody saw them at the time,” Dr. Osher explains. “If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a map is worth many thousands of words.”
To mark its first decade in operation, the map library is now hosting the exhibit, “Treasures III: A 10th Anniversary Celebration.” The exhibit features recent acquisitions, including an 1823 landscape of Augusta and a German U-Boat atlas with a detailed map of the greater Portland coastline.
“The map library was built on the premise that maps are unappreciated, underutilized, and not sufficiently exposed to view and study by the population at large,” says Dr. Osher. “They are very powerful historical artifacts that contain the history of civilization and they're not really used or exploited as such.”
“I don't think anybody has made the effort that USM has to incorporate maps into the curriculum, to use them as teaching documents, to give students of all ages the opportunity to see them up close and to have them interpreted,” he adds.
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[A. Aveline]
Seville Ville Archiepiscopale et Capitale du Royaume d’Andalousie en Espagne; elle étoit nommée
ancienement HISPALIS
Copperplate, 32.9 x 34.8 cm.
Paris: Daumont, ca. 1750-1760
Enggass Collection
For armchair travelers of the mid-18th century, this bird’s eye view of Seville, Spain, was the equivalent of
a national geographic style magazine of our own time. Published in Paris, the hand coloring of this copy
from the Enggass Collection of Iberian Maps is particularly deft, resembling a watercolor more than a
copperplate engraving. |
The information contained in maps, according to Dr. Osher, cuts across all fields, including history, art, science, geography, mythology, religion, technology, politics, and war. “The proof of that is in the number of classes in the various disciplines that come here to see them and use them in the teaching program,” he says. In addition to K-12 students around the state, students at USM and other schools within the University of Maine System, as well as students at Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, and the Maine College of Art have utilized the resources of the map library. Students from Harvard University and Clark University have also visited the map library.
“We are a hybrid,” Dr. Osher explains. “We're like a small museum. We're a specialized reference library dealing with cartography and the history of cartography, and we are a classroom.” The map library has been able to expand its reach with facsimile exhibits and educational kits that are developed, along with each exhibit, to travel to schools throughout the state, and more and more with exhibition materials and teaching guides developed for distribution via the Internet (www.usm.maine.edu/maps/education.html).
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Calso Gasolines
New Hampshire, Vermont Points of Interest and Touring Maps
Chicago: H. M Gousha Company, 1957
Bloom Collection
By the 1950s the automobile had become a staple for most American households. Through its colorful
imagery, touring maps such as this one for New Hampshire and Vermont, invited families to experience a
cultural tradition such as maple sugaring.
Esso, Humble Oil & Refining Company
Travel Map of New England
Convent Station, NJ: General Drafting Co., Inc., 1963
Bloom Collection
By the 1960s, artists who designed road map covers had distilled each region into stock images. Lobster
traps in the foreground, bait shacks in the background, and mewling seagulls overhead came to represent
the typical coastal fishing village of New England. Because of their effectiveness, these images continue to
be employed by the tourist industry to this day.
Sunoco
New England States Road Map and Historical Scenic Guide
Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1948
Bloom Collection
In 1948, when wartime gasoline rationing had ended, the covers of American oil company road maps
were designed to entice drivers into their cars to explore the American landscape. Typical of this period is
this Sunoco map in which the New England region is represented as a scenic landscape dotted with small
villages dominated by the requisite white church steeple. The young couple in the foreground that overlooks
this bucolic scenery represent the thousands of GI’s and their brides becoming re-acquainted with their
homeland.
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The emphasis on working with the K-12 population of students is one more feature of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education that sets it apart from other map libraries across the country. “The Osher Map Library is a leader in this movement,” says Jim Akerman, director for the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library in Chicago.
Akerman will join Osher Map Library curator Yolanda Theunissen and Ron Grim, formerly of the Library of Congress's Geography and Map Division, in a presentation on educational outreach efforts at the next International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC) in Budapest in July 2005.
The Hermon Dunlap Smith Center has been in existence for 30 years, but Akerman notes its entry into K-12 educational outreach is relatively new. He notes that many map libraries' primary focus is to serve the needs of the educational institution in which they are housed, and limitations of staff and financial resources have likely kept them from expanding their scopes.
The Internet has provided the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center a relatively uncomplicated and low cost way to make its collection more widely available to K-12 educators. In January, the center launched a free Web site (www.newberry.org/k12maps) that provides 18 map-based units for four grade levels. “It seems to be a logical extension of what we do,” Ackerman notes, adding that there is a small, but growing movement by map libraries around the country to extend their reach.
The belief that the materials in the map library's collection should be shared with the public was one shared by the Oshers and the late Eleanor Houston Smith. The Oshers met with Mrs. Smith, who in 1987 had donated to USM a collection of maps that she and her late husband, Lawrence M.C. Smith, had built together. “She wanted the collection to be in the public domain and we were able to build upon what she started,” Dr. Osher says. “One of my great regrets was that she did not live to see her dream realized. She saw only the beginnings of it; I think she would have been very pleased to see how it has come along.”
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C.C. Petersen Advertising
Dated Events War Map
Orthographic projection, 45 x 98 cm.
Printed by Shaw-Barton, Inc., Coshocton, Ohio,
Copyright: 1942
Courtesy of gift of the Edward E. Chase Family
During WWII, Americans could follow events
abroad through mass produced maps such as this
“Dated Events War Map.” These maps also
served as patriotic advertisements for local vendors
who imprinted their businesses on the sheet and
then distributed complimentary copies to their customers.
We can picture these boldly colored maps
on the walls of American households, on which
family members could track battles and other
developments in the theaters of war far from
home. |
Mrs. Smith was the founding donor whose confidence in USM led the way for future donors and helped secure USM's role as a viable repository for rare materials.
Meredith Smith, Eleanor and Lawrence Smith's daughter who serves on the map library's Board of Review, says she has been delighted to watch the evolution of the map library and knows that her parents would be pleased that their treasures, which they used to pore over for hours, are accessible for others to study.
Today, the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education's collection contains more than 60,000 rare maps, among them: the first modern printed map, a 1475 hand-colored map of the Holy Land; a 1494 copy of a letter by Christopher Columbus; a 1616 map of New England featuring the only known portrait of Captain John Smith; and a land survey by George Washington.
The map library–one of about a dozen historical cartographic collections in the country accessible to the public–regularly holds exhibitions, lectures, conferences, classes, and other special events designed for leading cartographic scholars, college students, the public, and Maine school children.
A sign of the map library's stature was its selection in 2003 to co-host, along with the Harvard Map Collection, the prestigious International Conference on the History of Cartography.
Dr. Osher, a life-long map enthusiast who notes that he asked, “which way is north?” as soon as he could talk, says he never envisioned that his purchase in 1975 of several maps while on a trip to London with his wife would lead him down this road. “No, no, no, there was no grand plan,” he says. “The idea then was to get a few old maps of Maine.” Dr. Osher bought some reference books to learn more about his early purchases and was hooked. “And one thing led to another,” he says. He credits Peggy with helping him develop a plan for his retirement from a career in medicine. “It's pretty hard to find something as absorbing and stimulating as medicine, but maps do it for me,” he says.
As their collection grew, the Oshers recognized they had some important maps and with that ownership came the obligation “to do right by them.” The couple went through periods where they collected maps that illustrated a particular period of history or new geographic concepts or discoveries, thus creating sub-collections within their larger collection. “That's a reason not to break it up,” Dr. Osher says. “The sum is worth more than its parts.”
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Moses Greenleaf
Map of the State of Maine
1820/21
Engraving, sectioned and mounted on linen
103.5 x 67.3 cm.
Boston
Osher Collection
On March 15, 1820, President Monroe signed the Maine statehood bill. Moses Greenleaf, an early proponent
for statehood and Maine’s unofficial cartographer, quickly revised his 1816 map of the “District of
Maine by replacing the word “district” by “state” in the title. He also added several new towns and made
corrections based on new information. This hand-colored copy has been cut into 30 pieces that were then
backed on linen. This segmentation allows it to be folded into a convenient pocket traveling map instead of
an oversized wall map. |
“We have a number of things that are very rare, that are not out there for people to study and see, certainly not in this area,” he adds. “I used to think rarity was import, but what's really important is what a map contributes to our knowledge. Does it illuminate some geographic feature, or some discovery, or some event in a way that others didn't or was the first to do it?”
The Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education has been the first to do several things that have since been copied by peer institutions. It was one of the first map libraries, for example, to hire a resident faculty scholar. Associate Professor Matthew Edney was assigned to help interpret the collection and serve as an interface between the map library and the USM faculty. The University of Texas at Arlington has since created a similar position, patterned after the position at USM's map library.
Dr. Osher attributes the map library's success to several key factors, including the tremendous support of USM President Richard L. Pattenaude and his administration. The map library's Board of Review, which ensures that the map library continues to fulfill the provisions of its original charter, and the Osher Library Associates, a volunteer advisory board, have also helped guide the creation, development, and growth of the map library. The Osher Library Associates have helped tosupply funds to pay for lectures, to hold exhibitions, and to print exhibition materials and books. “That group is one of our secret weapons,” Dr. Osher says. “They've made it possible for us to do a number of things that we couldn't otherwise do.”
Looking forward, the map library is talking about plans to expand its facility. The current storage space is at capacity. Dr. Osher says the map library has been designed to continue on its present path into perpetuity. “Our thought is that this is for the ages,” he says. “It's been a very successful enterprise. It's had an impact far beyond this University and has inspired other people to do some of the things we're doing.”
The success of the map library has also generated interest from other donors in housing their collections at USM. Dr. Osher, for example, worked with Bernard and Shirley S. Kazon, who donated their collection of political memorabilia to the University's Special Collections. Other collectors, including Peter Enggass, a professor emeritus of geography and geology at Mt. Holyoke College, have donated materials to further enhance the map library's own collection.
Boston developer and fellow map collector Norman Leventhal has asked Dr. Osher to serve on an advisory board for the newly established Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library. “He is very much interested in outreach to the schools,” Dr. Osher says, adding that Leventhal has been stimulated by the work USM's map library has done in that area.
For a small facility, located in the Glickman Family Library on USM's Portland campus, the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education has had an impact in Maine and throughout the country. And, maybe most important to Dr. Osher, is the role he's played in making maps accessible to those who may never have seen anything like them before. The idea, after all, of collecting rare finds and “putting them in a drawer” has never appealed to Dr. Osher. “They belong where they can be seen and used and studied and appreciated. To hoard them, even if we showed them off to friends, didn't seem right.
“These are treasures that belong not just to us, who are fortunate enough to be able to get them, but they belong, they should belong to everybody.”
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