100 days until 100 years: William Smith Map Displayed at Branner

Friday, March 27 – Thursday, April 2, 2015

Located in the Branner Library exhibit case on the 2nd floor of the Mitchell Earth Sciences Building

This exhibit coincides with "The William Smith Map at Stanford," lecture on March 31, 2015, 4-6:30 pm in the Hartley Conference Center.

Also known as the William Smith Map, the map is a monumental achievement by a man who personally collected the information over 15 years and created the first national map of geology, featuring England, Wales and part of Scotland. While the exact number of copies printed is of some debate, evidence suggests that there were no more than 300 such issued, of which only 70 exist today. The 1815 map (there was also an 1829 version) came in five variations, designated as 34, 100, A, P and Y.   Stanford owns two copies of the map and the one you see in the case is designated as 34 and comes in 15 segments -- the display includes 3 of these segments as shown in the image above.  This map was scanned at Stanford University Libraries in 2014; the British Geological Society took the digital copy and georeferenced it. The digital copy was then unveiled as part of The British Geological Society’s bicentennial celebration of this map on March 23, 2015.

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This exhibition commemorates the 100th anniversary of the University's purchase of John Casper Branner’s personal geological library, the foundation for the current Branner Earth Sciences Library. The libary will be hosting a series of anniversary events over the next 100 days that will culminate on June 11, 2015, with a public celebration, speakers, and a curator's tour of the library. Please join us.