Harvard Map Collection

Excellent article today about Prof. Straneo's first year students looking for icebergs in old maps and other primary sources #harvardgazette #houghton #teachingwithspecialcollections

Cartographic elephants, part II! The other place where elephants are found on European maps is in empty spaces on the maps themselves. In these selections by Molly @taylorpoleskey from the @harvardmaps collection, elephants appear in particular in two areas of maps of Africa. In the majority of this selection, elephants are depicted in Central West Africa, approximately in today's Cameroon. This does not correspond exactly to the location that the Portuguese had termed the "Ivory Coast" (one of four "coasts," together with gold, pepper, and slaves), which was the westernmost of these trading areas, but lies further east and inland (presumably where more blank space was available to map designers). Other maps (slides 5 and 6) show elephants in East Africa, roughly in today's Kenya and Mozambique. What all these depictions have in common is that, in contrast to the elephants on the borders of maps with their mahouts, these animals are all depicted as wild and free. All maps from @harvardmaps : Slide 1: G8320 1635 B5 Slide 2: G8320 1580 O7 Slide 3: G8200 1657 H6 Slide 4: G8200 1637 M4 Slide 5: G8200 1662 B5 Slide 6: G8200 1529 R5 1893

Cartographic elephants! One place to seek out the elephant is on European maps. We owe all of these finds to the superlative Molly Taylor-Poleskey (@taylorpoleskey ) of the Harvard Map Collection (@harvardmaps ). In today's examples, elephants are found crowding the cartouches that nestle in the corners of maps and proclaim the maps' title or subject. The first two elephants (Slides 1 & 2) are Asian elephants, both ridden by mahouts. The second elephant even has the honor of bearing the map's subtitle and its colophon on the tasseled cloth draped over its body. The third elephant (Slide 3), by contrast, represents a different part of the world, for this is a map of Africa. Yet it is notable that this elephant too is surmounted by a mahout with a parasol much like the one in Slide 1. Visually, it seems, African and Asian elephants are difficult to distinguish in cartographic allegory. All maps are from the Harvard Map Collection. Shelfmarks: Slide 1 - G7420 1675 S2 Slide 2 - G8000 1742 C6 Slide 3 - G8200 1690 D3

Cartographic Research Assistant, JR, shows the 1939 stamp of the last time a student checked out (!) this 1633 Mercator atlas to University Librarian, Martha Whitehead, and Houghton Librarian for Scholarly and Public Programs, Peter Accado at last night's Renaissance Treasures exhibit opening. https://library.harvard.edu/exhibits/renaissance-treasures-harvard-map-collection

We finished our Hondius 1630 world map puzzle just in time for the new semester, but, gah: one piece missing!

We think we have just acquired our longest map: a 1962 river guide of the Colorado passing fully through the Grand Canyon, ca. 45'. Mapmaker, Les "Buckethead" Jones.

Are you going to a shopping mall this Black Friday? Instead, why not make a map of all the malls in your vicinity? The Harvard Map Collection’s map making tutorials include step-by-step instructions for how to download geographic data for commonly tagged #OpenStreetMap locations, such as malls and shops. Head over to our website and give yourself the gift of #skills

So proud to have a map from our collection displayed in Prof. Soto Laveaga's wonderful exhibit, Measuring Difference https://chsi.harvard.edu/measuring-difference If you haven't been yet, make time to visit Harvard's Collection of Historic Scientific Instruments! #histsci

Laying out all our Rhine panoramas as we make final choices for the upcoming Rivers and Roads exhibit #rhineriver #tourism #antiquemaps

Not sure if this one passes an accessibility check … #typography #maps

Geology of Martha’s Vineyard [1824]

Hi IG! Belle Lipton here (Harvard Maps GIS Librarian). Thanks for staying tuned during our social media strategy of late whereby I notice really cool maps we have pulled out in our reading room for researchers or course support. Today, on the way to lunch, I walked past this 1721 chart showing the Aztec calendar wheel, which our map librarian Molly is using with with an art history class about the moon! 🌝 From the accompanying rare maps fact sheet: “This wheel represents a 52 year cycle and an 18 month annual cycle with symbols of the 18 festivals. The phases of the moon are shown in the inner circle with a serpent moving clockwise.” The cartographer, described as “an adventurer…is said to have copied his wheel from several unknown sources.”