The Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education

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.

History

Phase One (1986-1993)

In 1986, the Smith Collection of maps, atlases, and globes was donated to the University of Southern Maine by Eleanor Houston Smith (1910-1987) in memory of her husband Lawrence M. C. Smith (1902-1975). The Smiths had become summer residents of Maine in 1946, when they purchased Wolfe's Neck Farm in Freeport. During the next three decades they acquired many maps, globes, and atlases that reflect their interest in history and geography and their devotion to the Maine coast. Their commitment and generosity to the state expressed itself in a number of ways. They gave Mast Landing Sanctuary in Freeport to the Maine Audubon Society and Wolfe Neck Woods to the people of Maine. Their foresight and generosity made possible the acquisition of Popham Beach as a state park. In 1984, Mrs. Smith gave Wolfe's Neck Farm to the University of Southern Maine; in 1986, she donated to the university the cartographic collection that had delighted her and her husband for so many years. Their enthusiasm and love for early cartography lives on through their magnificent legacy. Their children published a memorial catalog of the collection in 1988: Maps, Globes, Atlases and Geographies through the Year 1800, compiled by James E. Mooney.

The Smith Collection was physically transferred to USM in 1988. It was housed temporarily in the Gorham campus library while plans were prepared to construct an addition to the library in Bailey Hall. At the same time, the Maine Humanities Council funded a popular map exhibition guest curated by Susan Danforth, map curator of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. The Land of Norumbega: Maine in the Age of Exploration and Settlement was installed first at the Portland Museum of Art and then the Hudson Museum, University of Maine at Orono. The exhibition brought together, and for the first time on public display, maps from the Smith Collection, from the still-private Osher Collection, and from several other private and public Maine collections. In the following year, 1989, USM hired Yolanda Theunissen to a newly created library position to manage the Smith Collection.

Prompted by the example of the Smith donation, Dr. Harold L. Osher and his wife, Peggy L. Osher, together donated their map collection to USM in 1989. The Oshers are long-time residents of Maine and they live in Portland, where Dr. Osher was the director of cardiology at Maine Medical Center for many years. They began collecting maps in earnest on a visit to London in 1975. Since that time, they have been avid and committed collectors of early cartographic materials. The Oshers have been generous supporters of the medical and cultural communities of Maine throughout their lives. Their long-standing interest in history and early exploration and their deep appreciation of art and culture have made them very discriminating collectors. Constant attention to quality is reflected in the stunning examples of cartography that grace their collection. After conversations with Eleanor Smith, the Oshers donated their collection to the University of Southern Maine. The two gifts constituted the founding collections, complimenting each other with surprisingly little overlap.

Moreover, the Oshers donated additional resources and advocated the creation of the special map library that bears their name. The Osher Library Associates was incorporated in 1990 to support and promote the interests and continuity of the map library. Predating the eventual opening of the map library by four years, this non-profit friends group was instrumental in raising funds for its construction. The new library was planned for the first floor of the new Portland campus library, to be housed in the former Nabisco Bakery acquired by USM in 1990. (The campus library was renamed the Glickman Family Library in 2000.) USM began a three-year capital campaign to raise $1.5mil for the map library’s construction. As part of this campaign, the map library collaborated with the Portland Museum of Art on two more exhibitions featuring maps from the Smith and Osher Collections: The Art of Discovery (Fall 1992) and Maps, Myths and Monsters: Images and History on Early Maps (Spring 1994).

Phase Two (1994-2008)

The Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education opened its doors on October 16th, 1994. The inaugural exhibition, Treasures of the Collection, showcased maps, atlases, globes, and scientific instruments. An accompanying conference, Reading the World: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Maps, was held at the Holiday Inn by the Bay. This conference included David Woodward's presentation of the inaugural Ball Lecture, founded by Barbara M. Goodbody in honor of her aunt and uncle, Edmund F. and Virginia B. Ball, and also John Noble Wilford's presentation of the inaugural Mattson-New York Times Lecture, established by the New York Times Foundation to honor their retired president, Walter E. Mattson, a graduate of Portland Junior College (one of USM's predecessor institutions).

With the opening of its facilities, OML could receive further gifts of maps. Since then, several donations have substantially increased the size and scope of the collections, notably from Tony Naden, Prof. Peter M. Enggass, Douglas Yorke, the family of Henry Stuart Michie, Edna and Lawrence Story, Gerard Morin, Charles and Dalinda Carpenter, and Norman H. Morse. Prof. Enggass's donation of almost 100 maps of Spain and the Iberian Peninsula, dating between 1486 and 1828, were the subject of the library's exhibition in 1998-1999. More information about the collections are available on the Collections tab of this website.

In 1995, OML implemented part of the Oshers' vision for the map library by appointing Matthew Edney, a young assistant professor of Geography at SUNY Binghamton, to be the library's Faculty Scholar. One of Prof. Edney's innovations was to establish the original OML website. In particular, the provision of online versions of OML's exhibitions has supplemented the printed catalogs, both providing space for more content and expanding their reach. Highlights of the map library's activities in this period include:

  • hosting the three-day annual meeting, in Fall 1996, of the Society for the History of Discoveries at the Holiday Inn by the Bay
  • participation in Opsail 2000, the Tall Ship Regatta, with a facsimile traveling exhibition loaned to half a dozen cultural organizations throughout Maine. OML also hosted a two day annual meeting for the North East Map Organization (NEMO)
  • publication in 2001 of Reading the World, the first in the series of Occasional Publications of the Osher Library Associates, comprising the essays presented at the 1994 conference
  • organizing in 2001 a day-long conference and half-hour TV program, Road Maps: The American Way, in conjunction with the popular exhibition of the same name guest curated by Prof. Robert French
  • publication in 2003 of the second occasional publication, Don Johnson’s Charting Neptune’s Realm: From Classical Mythology to Satellite Imagery
  • co-hosting in July 2003, with the Harvard Map Collection, of the week-long International Conference on the History of Cartography; among the several specially created exhibitions was OML's first installation of a permanent facsimile display, Heavens on Earth, in the lobby of the USM’s Southworth Planetarium
  • tenth-anniversary celebrations in 2004 with a year-long program of guest lectures keyed to the themes of the exhibition, Worldly Treasures, and with the publication of the third occasional publication, Walter MacDougall’s Settling the Maine Wilderness: Moses Greenleaf, His Maps and His House-hold of Faith, 1777-1834
  • Dr. Mary Pedley, of the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, gave the inaugural David Woodward Memorial Lecture in 2006

After a second capital campaign, as part of USM's University Commons project, OML closed for reconstruction in December 2007. All collections, equipment, and furnishings were moved to offsite storage for the duration of construction. A $466,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2008 enabled OML to purchase custom-designed compact storage systems for the new addition. During the closure, OML once again worked with the Portland Museum of Art for the 2009 exhibition, The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration in American Culture, guest curated by Prof. Michael Robinson.

Phase Three (2009- )

The third phase of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education begins with the grand reopening of the newly expanded OML on October 16-17-18, 2009.