Artifacts
AGS of NY Archives Grant-Supported Processing Project Completed
by Bob Jaeger and Susan Peschel
A three-year project to organize and process the American Geographical Society of New York Archives, funded by a grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation through the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), has been completed.
The CLIR grant funded a full-time archivist and part-time student employees to work on the collection, which contains the records of the Society, the only organization focused on bringing together academics, business people, those who influence public policy (including leaders in local, state and federal government, state and federal government, not-for-profit organizations and the media), and the general public for the express purpose for furthering the understanding of the role of geography in our lives.
The materials date from the Society’s founding in 1851 and include approximately 350 cubic feet of material, with documents relating to well-known figures in American exploration and the larger field of geography from the mid–nineteenth century through most of the twentieth.
Highlights include log books, diaries, photographs, and artifacts of early Polar expeditions, such as the papers of Robert E. Peary (who served as President of the Society), the American flag carried by Capt. Charles Francis Hall on his second Polar Expedition, and correspondence with such individuals as David Livingstone, Franklin D. Roosevelt (an AGS councilor), Charles Lindbergh, and William H. Seward, to name only a few.
The collection contains correspondence, publications, reports, maps, meeting minutes, ledgers, and records on expeditions, explorers, and other geographic organizations and activities. For more information, please contact the American Geographical Society Library at 414-229-6282 or via email at agsl at uwm dot edu.
American Geographical Society Library Records, 1851-2013 (link to finding aid)
American Geographical Society New York Archives (link to digital collection)
The images selected for this digital collection focus on explorers and expeditions, particularly to the Polar Regions. Highlights include log books, diaries, photographs, and artifacts of early Polar expeditions, such as the papers of Robert E. Peary (who served as President of the Society) and Isaac Israel Hayes, sketches of Inuit life by Robert Flaherty, records from the Transcontinental Excursion of 1912, and correspondence with such individuals as David Livingstone, Franklin D. Roosevelt (a councilor), Charles Lindbergh, and Louise A. Boyd to name only a few. The collection also contains correspondence, publications, reports, maps, meeting minutes, ledgers, and records on expeditions, explorers, and other geographic organizations and activities. The digital collection is under development as more items continue to be scanned and added to the collection.
American Geographical Society Library 