Author Archives: Matt Perelli

Matt’s Map Madness

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Here I was surrounded by nearly three-score maps spanning an entire continent and three centuries, and I was lost down a rabbit hole. I was digging in every direction and only getting deeper. The end of the semester was approaching and the overwhelm was real. To save my sanity, I put it all down and walked away.

At the end of 2023, we received a donation of 55 maps of Europe, from Ireland to Illyricum, ranging in dates from 1573 to 1845. I didn’t know a thing about cartography other than how to spell the word. So, I used the appraisal document that accompanied the donation as my starting point for processing this collection. And that’s when things started going off the rails.

The appraisal featured a photo of each map with its title, author, date, dimensions and other information. As I read through it, with the maps in front of me, it became clear that the appraisal document had a few errors. One title seemed to be derived from a poor reading of the caligraphic script used to identify Scotland. Another had the title, etc., copy-pasted from another map. And yet another had a picture of a map that was not even part of this donation! How was I supposed to trust anything from this professional (?) document? Were the stated authors actually the authors? And wouldn’t they be “cartographers?“ And how come these various map seller & collector websites seem to have the same map but with different names and dates? Wait, this map has a cartographer, an engraver, a printer AND a publisher?!

Around Summer, 2024, I pulled my head out of that rabbit hole (for now) and decided to start at what I thought was square one. Since I now knew even less about cartography than when I started, I researched the history of cartography. That didn’t help much because the History of Cartography, the actual field studying the study of cartography, really began to formalize in the 1960s. Cartography, the making of maps, is thousands of years old. I went back to Paleolithic rock drawings, portolans, mappa mundi, maps from the early Arab and Muslim empires, and still got lost.

I took a break. Then UR went on winter break. I eventually found my way back to the maps, literally and figuratively. Since I couldn’t rely on the appraisal document, I figured I could rely on the maps themselves. Many of them had their publishers and/or creators printed in the cartouche or along the margins. For those that did not, plenty of online databases, either map sellers or other libraries & archives, had similar maps by the same creators so that I could switch between various sites to narrow down which map I had. I tried to be as accurate as possible while also remembering my frantic trips down those rabbit holes. As the saying goes, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. As my boss reminded me, we are not a map repository, so for a few maps, close enough had to be good enough.

The majority of these maps are folio maps. They were originally part of an atlas, but some enterprising book sellers centuries ago realized that while they could make some money selling one atlas, they could make a lot more money selling the maps individually. The separation of map from atlas increases the difficulty of properly identifying the map, especially because atlas publishers had a tendency of inserting newly printed maps into the mix with previous editions of the atlas, or excluding a map if one wasn’t available at time of binding and selling. Or, two maps could have been printed from the same copper plate, but decades apart by different publishers employing their own colorists.

Somehow, the pieces all started clicking together. I was able to build my inventory list, and wrangle some intellectual control over this collection. The only real challenge in writing the finding aid was figuring out the modern place names for various locations, some of which had been latinized or featured kingdoms or bishoprics that no longer politically exist. Where is Sarmatia?

These maps will be on display all semester (Spring 2026) in the case just outside the Book Arts, Archives & Rare Books office suite on the newly opened ground floor. I’ll be swapping them out every two weeks or so. And if you want to use them for your research, go to archives.richmond.edu and search for collection MS-77.

4,000 Years and Counting

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Did you know that we have a cuneiform messenger tablet in our Rare Book collection? Do you know what a “cuneiform messenger tablet” is? Back in 2350 BCE, a scribe at a temple in Umma, Sumer (present-day Iraq) repeatedly pressed his wedge-shaped stylus into a 3cm x 3cm clay tablet, recording a “list of provisions supplied to the temple, including oil, meat, dates, and grain. On the edge in fine characters is the date.” Picture a frosted mini-wheat, minus the frosting, and that’s kind of what our tablet looks like. It’s basically a 4,000-year old inventory or accounting document, small enough to be easily transported by a messenger who would then deliver it to be read by another scribe.

Can I read cuneiform? No, no I cannot. Can you read it? Well, you can make a research appointment to study it, but you can’t touch it. So how can you study it? Spring semester of 2024 gave us the opportunity to figure that out.

Professor Elizabeth Baughan, Department of Classical Studies, accompanied one of her students on his research visit to study the tablet. They wore gloves while examining the tablet, but their cell phone photos couldn’t quite capture the detail they needed to further study the tablet on their own time. We enlisted the help of our colleague, Warner, in the Digital Scholarship Lab and the DSL’s high-resolution camera. Those photos turned out much better. One of them will even be used for the thumbnail in the tablet’s catalog entry. But high-res photos still don’t solve the problem of getting your hands on history.

We reached out to Nathan Hilliard-Hansen, the Studio Art Lab Manager, to see if he had the tools to scan the tablet and render a 3D model. He did! Natalie & I met up with Prof. Baughan at Nathan’s lab. Even though his equipment has been able to scan many different objects, including coins, with high-fidelity, the texture of our tablet proved too much of a challenge for the scanning software.

Undaunted, Prof. Baughan reached out to her colleague at VCU, Bernard Means of the Virtual Curation Lab. Natalie escorted the tablet to Prof. Baughan’s lab where Bernard had his equipment set up. A few weeks later, he produced digital files and two 3D-printed models! One life-sized, and one jumbo-sized. The 3D prints don’t quite capture the full detail of the cuneiform, but it’s a tablet you can hold without giving us in the Rare Book Room a heart attack!

Overstuffed file folder containing discolored pages.

Walk You Through The Process

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When I tell people my job title, Processing & Reference Archivist, there is always a little pause as they try to figure out what that means. I usually quickly follow up with, “What does that mean?” and give a quick explanation of Reference Archivist and Processing Archivist. The Reference part most people get; it’s the Processing part that most people don’t.

Processing a collection basically means making it usable and discoverable by researchers. There are a variety of actions a collection may or may not require, depending on what state it’s in when we acquire it. One of the basic preservation tasks I undertake is called re-housing. I remove documents from their original folder and place them in a new, archival folder. I transcribe any original information recorded on the old folder onto the new folder, in addition to any information required to identify the folder in our collection.

So, yes, I get paid to move papers from one folder to another. The photo I’ve included helps illustrate why I do that. This badly over-stuffed folder had been sitting in its records carton for about 60 years. It was the first folder in line so had been pressed up against the inside of the box. The “tan lines” on the visible pages demonstrate why archival folders and boxes are different from regular everyday folders and boxes. The folder had protected part of the pages from the surface of the box. Archival folders and boxes are engineered to be free of the acids and lignins that naturally occur in most paper products. You can also see where a rubber band had valiantly tried to hold it together before degrading. Pro tip: do not use a rubber band to hold your documents together. If the rubber band doesn’t tear the edges of the papers, it will inevitably degrade and either stick to whatever surface it’s touching, or come apart just as you’re removing the folder from the box, thereby spilling the papers onto the table, the floor and just all over the place.

I re-housed this beast into five archival folders. As part of that work, I smoothed out any wrinkles and creases, unfolded folded-up documents, removed paperclips (they rust and tear paper), and placed barriers between newspaper or telegrams and adjoining documents. Newspaper, telegrams and similar materials were not intended to last long. They’re cheap, mass-produced materials which quickly degrade and will stain, and weaken, whatever papers they’re filed against because they are not, you guessed it, acid-free or lignin-free.

If you have newspaper clippings stored somewhere at home, don’t expect them to last forever unless you put in a little preservation effort. If it’s just the information you want to keep, consider making a photocopy or digital scan. If the clipping or newspaper itself has intrinsic value, there are polypropylene sleeves of various sizes available from reputable archival supply companies. It’s best to store the newspaper as flat and unfolded as possible. The paper becomes brittle as it degrades, so if you have a clipping folded up in an envelope, be prepared for that envelope to eventually contain newspaper confetti.

If I didn’t take any of these actions, the researchers would be left digging through all the boxes (and for this collection, that’s around 300 records cartons). More likely, I would be the one doing the digging. But taking these actions means I can quickly provide the researcher the information they are looking for. Being a Processing Archivist makes my job as a Reference Archivist much easier.