During the last two weeks of this past summer, I spent my time back at Carleton working alongside Ayana Sakamoto and Professor Asuka Sango. Our project worked to utilize Carleton’s vast collection of Army Map Service (AMS) and Office of Strategic Service (OSS) maps, which would later be used for Professor Sango’s future course ASST 285, Mapping Japan, the Real and Imagined. While work on cataloging Carleton’s maps began in 2023, my role this summer mainly focused on discovering the history of Carleton receiving these maps through archival research and, eventually, the mystery of many of the maps’ whereabouts.
Ayana and I spent the first few days working alongside Professor Sango, and we met with Jackie Beckey, the special collections librarian, to plan the best way to show materials and schedule visits for her future class. We also worked on cataloging military strategy maps that were of interest at the Library of Congress and looked through the collections of other institutions, such as Stanford University and the University of Chicago, to see which of our OSS maps overlapped or were exclusive to Carleton’s collection. After the initial part of our research ended, Ayana and I began to work through various archives. We read through the correspondence between Carleton and the Army Map Service regarding becoming a depository for maps in 1945 and looked through emails of other depository institutions, such as Oregon State University, during this time. We learned that, in 1947, the Geology and Geography department received roughly 100,000 maps through the AMS depository program. However, as the Geography department was disbanded and many of the maps relocated to the Library, tens of thousands of these maps went missing. Through this, we sought answers by going to Carleton’s head archivist, Tom Lamb. Here, we looked through all the past Carleton Directories and many of the digitized Carletonian newsletters from the time Carleton became a map depository. I was also tasked to read and summarize the book Carleton’s Century of Geology: A Look at the Past, Present, and Future of Geology at Carleton College to find any mention of the collection and past professors such as Len Wilson, who may have been instrumental to Carleton’s collection of maps.
While making progress, our research in this project ended with even more questions about the uncovered history of Carleton’s maps, which is an overarching puzzle. I found this experience to be highly unique and was valuable in learning how archival research and research in general is done with a newfound appreciation for all digitized materials.