Harry R. Pringle, a lawyer and managing director of Drummond Woodsum & MacMahon, has written a highly informative Maine Voices article in today’s Portland Press Herald. In it, he pays tribute to the wonderful local resource Maine has with the newly expanded Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education.
This top-notch library has gained a national reputation for its collection of rare maps. What is even more delightful is that these treasures are available not only to view at the library, but also online. The website is a technological marvel that allows you to view beautiful old maps and other historical documents in exquisite detail. I urge you to visit it now.
The website introduces its collection this way:
The Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education was created not only to collect and preserve old maps but specifically to promote their study and their use in teaching. These complex and richly textured documents comprise a crucial element of our cultural heritage. We can use them to trace humanity’s spatial histories, from engagements with nature to modern globalization. By studying their production, we can comprehend how art, technology, faith, and science intertwine in the human experience. By exploring how they have variously been used, we can develop a social history of culture. The study of maps thus encompasses and integrates the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Their study offers such compelling insights that anyone can enjoy and learn from them.
Mission Statement
As an integral part of a comprehensive metropolitan university within the University of Maine System, the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education is committed to preserving the cartographic heritage of the state, region, and nation for future generations, and to making that heritage accessible to the University, the people of Maine, and to all other students, scholars, and visitors. It shares its collections through exhibitions (in its gallery, traveling, and online) and through collaborative efforts with other cultural institutions. It seeks to interpret its collections—to make them intellectually accessible—through K-12 outreach programs, dedicated university courses and special classes taught by its faculty scholar, public lectures and conferences, online and printed publications, and collaboration with scholars and teachers from the University and around the globe.
As Harry Pringle notes in his article:
Where else can anyone, regardless of age or educational background, have the chance to see and learn from such treasures as a 1475 map of the Holy Land; Christopher Columbus’ 1493 letter announcing the success of his voyage to the “islands of the India sea”; Capt. John Smith’s 1614 map of New England; the first map of the state of Maine, issued in 1820; and a map used to determine the boundaries of the United States of America at the Treaty of Paris in 1782-1783?
The Osher Map Library is having a grand reopening on October 16 -18 to celebrate its reconstruction and expansion. Mark your calendars.
This library is a treasure of which all Mainers should be proud.