Catalog incomplete
In the mid-1970s the AGS could no longer afford to archive its holdings and chose UWM to house the collection after a national search. It took nearly five years to orchestrate the move and surmount the legal challenges.
And Baruth concedes that riches may still lie hidden in the holdings.
In the library's more recent history, Baruth unearthed two prizes from the wall-length bookshelf in his own office: a first-edition copy of "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville and a travel book given to the AGS
by a young Teddy Roosevelt. Neither was found in the catalog at the time.
UWM Professor Bruce Fetter began specializing in both cartography and demography soon after UWM acquired the collection to better make use of the resource. He has been teaching a class on how to
use the collection for 26 years.
"This material is essential because it affects how we see the world," says Fetter. "It is a wonderful
way of getting a picture of the past."
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Adapted from materials provided by University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, via EurekAlert!,
a service of AAAS.
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Secrets In Rare Cartography. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 5, 2008, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2007/11/071120195707.htm