Part of a more than 20,000-item rare collection, the navigational atlases (also called pilots or neptunes) to be conserved include: Le Neptune Francois ou Atlas Nouveau des Cartes Marines, 1693; Suite de Neptune Francois ou Atlas Nouveau des Cartes Marines, 1700; De Nieuwe Groot Licthende Zee-Fakkel, 6th volume, 1753; and The East-India Pilot, and Oriental Navigator, two volumes, 1780. 

Navigational atlases came to prominence during the 17^th and 18^th centuries when European empires expanded with the establishment of companies like the East India Company. The British and Dutch East India Companies were the largest, and they colonized much of south and east Asia during this era. Sea captains and navigators used expensive, utilitarian navigational atlases for exploration – different from the broad-market atlases of the late 18^th century. Given their practical applications at sea, the navigational atlases experienced significant wear. Repairs for these folio-size atlases range from cover board replacement to complete rebinding. 

Though during the age of their creation, these atlases’ sole purpose was navigation, today they serve as key resources for information on history, colonization, exploration, and, of course, water. Conservation of these rare maritime atlases is one project in the AGSL’s efforts to preserve cartographic resources related to water, such as its vast collection of rare and unique 19^th-century nautical charts.  

The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, based in New York City, encourages excellence in scholarship and the arts, with one such area of focus being wide access to research library collections. Through the foundation’s grant, the AGSL will ensure the information contained within these rare maritime atlases will live on for hundreds more years. Conservation will be completed by August 2027. The 51���� Libraries is grateful for the support. 

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Cy Abbott, University of Oregon PhD candidate in geography, will examine the influence of American geographers and cartographers on drawing borders in Central Asia and the ‘Turkic world’ during the first quarter of the 20th century using the AGSL’s collection of maps loaned by the American Geographical Society to the Peace Conference at Versailles, 1918-1919. Abbott will also use the AGSL map collection to study Central Asia and Turkey, specifically maps mentioned in the “New Maps” or “Map Notices” section of various Geographical Review volumes. 

Jon Jablonski, University of California, Santa Barbara Library DREAM Lab director, will consider how urban historic cartography reflects the dramatic political and economic transformations of late 20th-century China. To investigate these transformations, Jablonski will examine the AGSL’s contemporary city maps of China, as well as its collections of US Army Map Service maps of 20th-century China. Jablonski’s fellowship also marks a return to his alma mater, where he served as a library services assistant during his undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

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–Faythe Levine, author of As Ever, Miriam (2024)

Visiting author and artist Faythe Levine is motivated by reimagining archives and collections through a queer feminist lens. She will give a visually led talk about her many-year research process, about her recently published fourth book, As Ever, Miriam (2024). This book centers on the relationship and lives of Charlotte Russell Partridge (1882-1975) and Miriam Frink (1892-1978), whose papers are housed at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives. Through her extensive archival and secondary research involving books, magazines, newspapers, and interviews, Levine brings readers into the work of connecting archival traces to tell stories about past lives. Frink and Partridge’s impact on Milwaukee’s cultural landscape was unprecedented and remains underrecognized, and Levine’s lecture will encourage future scholarship and conversations around deeper knowledge of their legacy.

Levine is currently based in the Hudson Valley in New York. She has been in service to the arts for over twenty years, many of those during her previous time living in Wisconsin. Her creative labor intersects with curatorial projects, writing, documentary film, and community events.

During the week, Levine’s day job is the Hauser & Wirth Institute Archivist and Collections Manager for , a residency and artist book publisher that supports women, trans, queer, intersex, and nonbinary artists. Her position focuses on WSW’s work as a hub for radical thought, and she manages, oversees, and increases public visibility of the archives and special collections through public engagement and exhibitions.

A related exhibition, Time is Running Out, curated by Levine in response to her archival research, will open at the Lynden Sculpture Garden on November 15, 2025, and run through March 14, 2026.

Books can be purchased and signed at the close of the program courtesy of Lion’s Tooth

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The oldest and rarest manuscript map in the American Geographical Society Library’s collection–Venetian cartographer Giovanni Leardo’s 1452 mappamundi–will be scanned using multispectral technology in March this year.

A team from the Lazarus Project, based at the University of Rochester, is visiting AGSL to scan the Leardo and, via digital processing, produce archival-quality images that will reveal faded and even invisible-to-the-naked-eye inscriptions on the nearly 600 year-old hand-drawn map.

The Lazarus team will offer a talk on their project and the AGSL’s Leardo map on Wednesday, March 12 at 5 p.m. in the AGSL.

Read more about the Lazarus Project’s visit to 51���� here>

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One of the American Geographical Society Library’s most cherished holdings, the 1452 Mappamundi by the Venetian cartographer Giovanni Leardo, is undergoing multispectral imaging this winter. Join us for a series of events, starting with a talk by AGSL Curator Marcy Bidney on Wednesday, February 19.

There are only three Leardo mappamundi left in the world. One of them is held here in Milwaukee at the AGSL, and the other two are held at libraries in Italy. In fall 2024, Bidney traveled to Italy to see the maps themselves. In this talk she will discuss the Leardo maps and their place in the history of cartography, her visits to the libraries in Italy, and some of the other treasures she was able to see from their collections.

Bidney’s talk will be held at 3:00 p.m. in the AGSL, located on the third floor of the 51���� Golda Meir Library, 2311 E. Hartford Ave.

A team from the will visit AGSL in March to image the Leardo, and will offer a public lecture on Wednesday, March 12.

Image: Giovanni Leardo, “Mappamundi,” 1452

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More about the Lazarus Project and AGSL>

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Stephen Appel joined the 51���� Libraries’ staff in 2016 as geospatial information librarian in the American Geographical Society Library (AGSL), one of the foremost cartographic libraries in North America. But he was already well-acquainted with campus and the library, having earned a BS in Conservation and Environmental Science (CES), graduate certificate of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and MS in Geography at 51����, and working as a graduate assistant and then consultant in AGSL. In his current position, Stephen is responsible for AGSL’s digital spatial data collections and related services that support research, scholarship, and coursework in GIS. He is also a member of the Libraries’ Digital Humanities Services team.

Q: What was your route to AGSL?

Stephen: After earning my bachelor’s degree in CES, I felt like I needed some hard skills on my resume. I had taken a GIS course as an undergrad and really liked it, so I decided to continue with that and work toward a GIS certificate, which led to an internship in AGSL and a master’s in geography. During my master’s I started to identify librarianship as a viable path, especially working in map libraries, and I kind of got lucky landing this job.

Q: What is GIS?

Stephen: It’s software that’s specifically for working with data that has some sort of location associated with it, for example, customer records. Lots of people use GIS to make maps, but it is also being used for various analyses specific to something’s location, to recognize that two points of data that don’t necessarily seem connected are by the fact of their proximity.

Q: What drew you to geography?

Stephen: I really like maps. It started early, as a Cub Scout and Boy Scout, where I learned about orienteering and maps, and continued into college with a collection of hiking and camping maps. But I didn’t associate that interest with the discipline of geography until I took my first GIS class, where I found the work very interesting and even fun—taking data and visualizing it, solving problems, making maps.

Q: How do you impact student success?

Stephen: One way is working with students directly through course instruction. When I started my job, I would visit classes and say ‘Hi, I’m Stephen and I work at the AGSL, here are our services, come visit me.’  That has transformed into what I call geospatial information literacy instruction. I am now spending much less time advertising our services and more time talking to students about finding and assessing data for their needs. This semester, for the first time, we are also offering walk-in GIS tutoring that fills a previously unmet need on campus.

Q: You often work with 51���� and visiting scholars and researchers. What has been your most interesting collaboration?

Stephen: We are involved in a 51���� project right now called Mapping Racism and Resistance, which looks at racially restrictive housing deeds written in Milwaukee during the early part of the 20^th century. It’s based on the University of Minnesota’s amazing Mapping Prejudice project, which digitized Twin Cities deeds and covenants, and made maps that visually reflected where non-white people were systematically excluded and unable to build generational wealth. Our 51���� project has hired a cartographer who is working with the Geography Department to make maps based on Milwaukee findings. AGSL will collect the data and maps and make them available to the public via our GeoDiscovery app.

Q: You led the development of GeoDiscovery, which was launched last year. Tell me about the app.

Stephen: Before GeoDiscovery, people would request data and we would have to locate and package it, and then burn it on to a CD or place it on Sharepoint—it always required our extensive mediation. With the new app, people can simply search for and download the data themselves. Another benefit is that it doesn’t limit to one particular collection. With GeoDiscovery, all the institutions participating—including the Big Ten Academic Alliance and a number of Ivy League schools and the University of California—share the data.

You have a number of publications and presentations. Is there one you are most proud of?

Stephen: Yes, the one that I think has had the most impact, certainly the one that has been cited the most was about geospatial information literacy instruction published in a special issue of the Journal of Map and Geography Libraries. At the time I was changing up my teaching by incorporating what I had learned about traditional info lit instruction into a framework that included GIS. There were a bunch of other excellent related articles in that issue and it has been fun to compare notes at conferences or via email with those librarians and others.

Q: What is the favorite part of your job?

Stephen: Lately I have really enjoyed getting back into technology, into learning technology. I had to learn so much for the GeoDiscovery project. Just this morning in a training I was talking about how working in the library is such a good place for someone who is really curious because I’m not only allowed to learn on the job but I’m expected to.

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The talk will be held in the American Geographical Society Library, located on the third floor, east wing of the 51���� Golda Meir Library, 2311 E. Hartford Ave.

For more information contact 51���� Archives: askarch@uwm.edu

Sponsored by 51���� Libraries’ Archives Dept. & 51���� Roberto Hernández Center.

Image: “Strangers No Longer” by John Fleissner

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