Brown University cataloguing its repository of rare maps

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --As prospectors poured west in the 1840s to find riches during the California gold rush, they turned to a valuable map that depicted the gold fields in yellow and the best routes to get there in blue.

In another continent more than 75 years later, a tourism map replete with swastikas was used in Nazi Germany to promote the country as an alluring destination.

Both maps belong to a Brown University collection of more than 1,000 rare maps that librarians are in the process of cataloging online in an effort to move into the digital age.

Officials say the push to catalog the artifacts -- some brittle with age, and many dating back 100 years or more -- will make them more accessible to the public and help those interested in urban studies, genealogy and other research areas.

"A good half of the collection wasn't known to the community," said Thomas Stieve, a social services data librarian who began working on the project after arriving at Brown a year and a half ago.

Until now, fewer than half of the maps had been posted online in the Brown library catalog, Stieve said. Of the remaining maps, some were documented on traditional library catalog cards, but for many, there were no records at all.

"You would have had to come to us and say, 'Do you have a map of this or a map of that?' and we would have had to answer that," said Sam Streit, associate librarian for scholarly services.

So far, 98 percent of the maps have been catalogued online in the Brown system, called Josiah, as well as on WorldCAT, a worldwide database where libraries can upload their collections. The university plans to digitize the maps so that Internet users can view them online.

The collection is broad, with much of it focused on the Americas and Europe. Some of the maps are so rare that Brown is believed to be the only university to have them, Stieve said.

Many were donated to the university or given as part of a bigger collection. For others, records are spotty at best as to how Brown received them.

The 1936 Nazi tourism map, proclaiming "Germany, the beautiful travel country," was provided by a Brown lecturer whose father had visited Germany at the time.

The maps, taken together, chart the growth of an developing Providence as well as the industrial and westward expansion of a fledgling nation.

Included in the collection are multiple regional maps. There are street maps of Providence from the 19th century showing the city in its evolving development, including its cove basin, which was later filled in. Others show early Boston, the counties of southern New England and the area of Rhode Island known as South County.

In 1936, a state map produced on the 300th anniversary of Providence's founding marked dozens of historically noteworthy sites -- including the Colony House in Newport, which once served as the central seat of state government, and an Indian burial ground in Charlestown.

Of national interest, there are antebellum maps showing the borders between slave states and free states. An 1830s map of the country includes a small portrait of George Washington, as well as a picture of the U.S. Capitol -- without its yet-to-be constructed famous dome.

Others maps in the collection probably functioned more as propaganda.

A color-coded map of the country from 1864, labeled "The Rebellion as it was and as it is," marks in red the "territory held by rebels" during the Civil War and denotes in yellow the "territory gained from rebels."

A British map of America produced in the mid 1800s was actually used as a board game called "Game of the Star-Spangled Banner." Stieve said the game was intentionally derogatory toward America, as it includes a picture of a lynching taking place.

A reception is planned this spring to celebrate the collection, which will be available for viewing inside the library, though the maps are not available to be checked out.