Eric D. M. Johnson, MA, MSLIS Head, Innovative Media Associate Professor Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries @ericdmj // 804-828-2802 // library.vcu.edu/workshop Pronouns: he/him/his |
Hello and happy Friday!
I have been given several folders of maps that our cartographic specialist said were taken from atlases. No information about the atlases was given, so each one has been an exercise in sleuthing. One particular map has me at my wit’s end. It has no title, no statement of responsibility, and no publisher’s information. No date, of course.
I’ve used Google Lens to search images based on a photograph I took of the map, with no luck. I’ve browsed through multiple atlas pages on the David Rumsey website, also to no avail. I’ve searched on the placenames listed in the legend, both in WorldCat and Google, also with no luck.
I’m wondering if anybody can help me identify this map or at least suggest a time frame for the publication date. I’ve resigned myself to creating a catalog record with a cataloger-created title and a long description, but I’d love to know where this came from and when. I am a general cataloger with training in cataloging pre-20th century maps, but I am not an expert in maps.
I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to attach the image, so here’s a description. The map is a circle depicting the eastern hemisphere with relief shown pictorially. It shows Europe to the north, including “Thule”, Scandinavia, and Novaya Zemlya. It shows the entire African continent, which extends to the western edge of the circle, and into China on the east, just east of Hainan Island, which is depicted as a peninsula. A land mass is shown just south of Vietnam, but it is not labeled. Australia is not shown.
The only text outside the map is North, East, South, and West, plus a legend that identifies places labeled with numbers on the map. The place names are:
- Pyramids
- Gaza
- R. Jordan
- M. Sinai
- Baharen Islands
- Persepolis
- Ecbatana
- Babylon
- Nineveh
- Cassimere
- Crimea
- Constantinople
- La-sa
I’m going to try to attach the image, but I imagine it will get stripped off by the listserv software. I will be more than happy to email it off-list!
Best regards,
Karen
Karen D. Miller
Monographic Cataloger/Metadata Specialist
Northwestern University Libraries
Northwestern University
1970 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
874.467.3462