Overview

October 21, 2004

The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library (NBL Map Center) was created to promote the use of maps as an important educational tool to understand human history, civilization and the world today. The NBL Map Center seeks to preserve, catalog, study, and exhibit the Boston Public Library’s historically significant collection of 350,000 (World, European and United States) maps, that will be integrated with the latest technological advances of Global Information Systems (GIS).

The Map Center’s collection is a public trust, governed by the mandate to provide free access to all and visitors do not require any academic affiliation or research credentials to utilize the Map Center’s resources. Programs of the NBL Map Center will include exhibits, lectures, an interactive web site, educational programs to be used in and out of the classroom, publications, and outreach to schools and communities throughout Boston.

We will create strong partnerships with philanthropic and corporate leaders with whom we share a common mission and values.

“One of the important things that we hope to do is to stand people on their heads, to give people new perspectives, new ways of looking at not only how we as Americans but everyone in the world relates to each other…. Clearly, one of the exciting parts of this is that the map itself is such an old technology. We are looking for ways to take some of the oldest things we have and create some new opportunities for them to be used and understood.”

Bernard Margolis, President of the BPL, articulated the vision for the NBL Map Center during his 2004 Lowell Lecture Series talk “Maps in the Boston Public Library, from Ptolemy to Rand McNally”

In October 2003 The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library launched its first exhibit entitled Faces & Places. Through a study of maps and essays of middle school age children, Faces & Places told the story of the 8 countries whose immigrant population has the largest representation in the City of Boston. The exhibit was visited by tens of thousands of people and as a result of its success a variation on the theme of this exhibit will be on display at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in Palm Beach County.

If you would like more information about the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center
at the Boston Public Library please call us at 617-859-2506 or email us at maps@bpl.org