The Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education celebrated its first full school year at the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn Campus with an open house on May 12, marking a milestone for the new Lewiston-Auburn K-12 Education and Community Map Lab that’s expanding the library’s educational reach.
The event brought together local educators, USM colleagues, and community members for a firsthand look at the Map Lab — a dedicated hands-on learning space where K-12 students can explore geography, history, and cartography through interactive activities and reproductions from the Osher Map Library’s collection. Field trips are offered free of charge, with the strongest demand coming from students in grades three through eight. Activities on display ranged from a reverse escape room built around longitude and latitude coordinates to Maine landmarks games, Lego building challenges, and scavenger hunts.
Renee Keul, assistant director of education and outreach for the Osher Map Library, said the open house was both a showcase and a celebration of a strong first year.
“We wanted to give teachers in the area an opportunity to come and see the place for themselves,” Keul said. “We also wanted to have a time to celebrate the fact that we’ve put a lot of work into the Map Lab and that we’ve had a successful first school year. It was kind of our soft launch.”
The Map Lab’s location at the Lewiston-Auburn Campus, Keul noted, has already made a difference for students who might not otherwise have access to this kind of experience.
“We had one class last year that was fourth or fifth grade, and they said that for almost all of the kids, this was their first field trip,” she said. “We’re so much closer to a lot of towns in Central Maine than our Portland location and we have the very great fortune that we are able to be free and not charge for field trips.”
Beyond the open house, the Osher Map Library is currently developing a three-site field trip program with the Franco-American Collection and the Maine Museum of Innovation, Learning and Labor (Maine MILL) in downtown Lewiston. The program would allow students to trace the stories of real mill workers across all three institutions, using historical maps at the Osher Map Library, archival documents at the Franco-American Collection, and work site history at Maine MILL.
“We’ll try and have them find where they worked on the maps at Osher,” Keul said. “We’ll try and have them find their names and documents in the Franco-American Collection, and then have them find their specific work site or work detail at Maine Mill. So we’re very excited about that.”
The Map Lab offers free field trips for K-12 groups, with visits available most weekdays starting at 10:00 a.m. Educators looking to bring their students in can learn more and schedule a visit through the Osher Map Library.