![De Wit 1672 [Osher Collection]](http://usm.maine.edu/maps/sites/default/files/MatthewEdney/featured_maps/map-image/world 1672 de wit large 20pc.jpg "De Wit 1672 [Osher Collection]") |
Current Exhibition:American Treasures October 18, 2009 - August 21, 2010American Treasures celebrates the reopening of the newly renovated and expanded Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at the University of Southern Maine. It explores the library’s rich and varied collections and its mission to preserve those collections and make them accessible. Beginning with the foundational gifts by the Smith and Osher families, the library’s collections emphasize Maine and New England, followed in order by the United States, the Americas, and the (continued) |
(click on image to view in greater detail) | Abraham Ortelius, Belgium, 1527-1598 Map of the World (Typus orbis terrarium), 1612 hand-colored engraving Courtesy of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at the University of Southern Maine, SM-1612-5 Image: 15.004 |
Abraham Ortelius, World Map, “Typus Orbis Terrarum”Abraham Ortelius’s world map was part of a bound volume of maps titled Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, [Theater of the World], now considered the first world atlas. Extending through thirty-three editions and translated into six languages, Terrarum influenced European ideas about world geography in general, and ideas about the Arctic in particular. Note the clearly defined channel above the American continent running east-west, as well as a series of Arctic channels running north-south towards the North Pole. |
