Clarke Spring Speaker Series

The Clarke Historical Library's upcoming speaker series has been announced. All of our presentations are free and open to the public. The programs begin at 7:00 pm in the Park Library Auditorium with a reception immediately following in the Clarke Historical Library. If you have questions or need accommodations, please contact us at 989-774-3352 or clarke@cmich.edu.

We are looking forward to an exciting lineup that includes:

Thursday, February 23
Exhibit Opening: The Soo Locks

​Michelle Briggs, Director of the United States Army Corps of Engineers Soo Locks Visitor Center and award-winning photographer, will discuss the Locks.​​

Monday, February 27​
Jack Deo: The Gems of Lake Superior: Brainard Freemont Child’s 3D Voyage in 1870 Lake Superior Views

B.F. Childs was one of the most prolific photographers of the Lake Superior region. Photographer and collector Jack Deo will travel back in time to present a 3D slide show of historic Lake Superior scenes including Native Americans, copper and iron mining camps and towns, lake transportation, and the beautiful scenery. 3D glasses will be provided.

Thursday, March 16​
Sally Howell​: The History of Islam in Detroit

Author of Old Islam in Detroit: Rediscovering the Muslim-American Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)​ to speak about her research.

Monday, March 20
Readings from African Fairy Tales ​

This program is presented in partnership with the African Humanitarian Educational Research Organization (AHERO), a Central Michigan University student organization.

Sunday, April 2 
Commemoration of U.S Entry into World War I​ ​

On April 2, 1917, Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany. This remembrance is presented in cooperation with Central Michigan University’s Center for International Ethics.

Clarke Historical Map Database Now Available

Detailed view of a John Farmer map
in the Clarke's Historical Maps Database

The Clarke Historical Library has a wealth of historical maps from Michigan, the Great Lakes, and beyond. Maps of areas as small as a single township to the entirety of the world can be found at the Library.

Clarke's Historical Maps Database showing thumbnail
images and brief descriptions for each map

Recently, staff of the Clarke and the CMU Libraries systems staff, particularly student assistant Lindsay Gabriel in the Clarke and Eric Cronstrom in systems, created a searchable database that allows any researcher anywhere in the world to find a brief description, low-resolution image, and citation to a bibliography for maps in our holdings.

Currently, information and images are available for 340 maps in the William Jenks Collection and five additional maps of the African continent from the Wilbert Wright Collection of Africana and Afro-Americana. As more maps are inventoried and images are taken of them, the information will be added to the database. 

Using the database is simple. Researchers can browse through all of the maps or use the search bar to search for a word (e.g. Detroit) or a simple term (e.g. Lake Huron) to find all of the maps in our holdings that match those search terms. When possible, we have linked the citations to bibliographies to the digital editions of those bibliographies so researchers can have access to even more information.

To view the map database, click on this link or look for "Historical Maps" in the "Resources" dropdown on the Clarke Historical Library webpage. We look forward to the expansion of this database and welcome any comments about edits or changes that need to be made.

David Livingstone's 200th Birthday

by Bryan Whitledge

Tuesday, March 19 marks the 200th birthday of Dr. David Livingstone (March 19, 1813 - April 30, 1873), the famous Scottish explorer and missionary who traveled throughout Southern, Central, and Eastern Africa and wrote extensively about his journeys. In popular culture, Livingstone is most often associated with Henry M. Stanley’s statement, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” supposedly uttered in November 1871 when Stanley tracked down Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. But David Livingstone’s life was much more than one line that may or may not have been spoken.

During his life, Livingstone lived for several years throughout the continent of Africa, at first as a missionary and later as an explorer. He led expeditions to traverse the African continent from West to East (Luanda, Angola to Quelimane, Mozambique), chart the path of the Zambezi River, and find the source of the Nile.

Livingstone’s life and exploits are not without criticism. Some often cited faults are that his expeditions were often rife with troubles and lacked organization, his theories of the source of the Nile were incorrect, and the movement to colonize Africa and the Scramble for Africa cited Livingstone’s travels to the interior of the continent as inspiration. At the same time, Livingstone has received praise for his strong contempt for slave trade and his interest in setting up “legitimate trade” with the peoples of the areas he traveled. His beliefs about slavery and the peoples of Africa inspired abolitionists and, later in the 20th Century, those opposed to European colonization.

The complex life of this 19th Century celebrity is documented in numerous texts. Among three of his most notable works are Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857), Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries (1865), and The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to his death (1874). The Clarke Historical Library maintains first editions of all three of these works as part of our holdings (pictured). These rare texts are among thousand of historical maps and texts that make up the Clarke's Africana and African-Americana collection.

Biographical information adapted from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry about David Livingstone