Good Morning Chiefs and Directors:
The Geography Map Division Family is saddened to inform you all of the death of our colleague Edward Redmond. Ed was a thirty-one year veteran of the Library. He served as the G&M vault curator working closely with our Preservation Directorate as well as
being the main POC for collection loans inside and outside of the Library. He was planning, and extremely excited about, our participation in the upcoming Two Georges Exhibit.
We will miss his wry sense of humor and his passion for working with maps. Ed Redmond embodied what the founders of the map collections of the Library of Congress thought it should be – a holistic representation of geography and cartography. Of course, he had
his personal favorites; the cartographic creations of George Washington with the enlightenment spirit of the founding fathers, Civil War Maps, and early survey and plat maps.
To hear Ed present to a class of undergraduates, or to a group of tourists who he coaxed into the vault in the basement of the Madison building, what the L’Enfant plan of Washington DC or what the manuscripts of Lewis & Clarke meant to the legacy of the US
was to hear what history is about, not just factually but spiritually, and with his passion.
Ed exemplified the spirit of the Library of Congress, a place where people and collections meet, where the greatest dreams of the humanists and idealists of the past come together, and attempt to rise above the everyday, trying to imagine a better and more
thoughtful world.
Ed embraced his role in the Library, and his legacy lives on in our collections and in our purpose.
Sincerely,
Paulette Hasier, Ph.D.
Chief, Geography and Map Division
Library of Congress
202-707-3400