>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> I'm Mike Buscher.
I'm the head of Reference &
Reader Services for the Geography
and Map Division at the
Library of Congress.
A few years ago, one of our staff
members was retired and living
up in Winchester, Virginia and met
a man who approached him and said,
"I have an item I wonder
if the Library
of Congress might be interested in."
So the next day, he went
over to this man's house
and the gentleman had
carefully rolled
up in 2 black plastic trash
bags, in his garage, this item
and he took it out and showed it.
And it's a one of a
kind map of Utah Beach.
It's a raised relief map.
It's in 2 sections.
It's quite large and it was made
about 10 days before the
landings in June of 1944.
And the man who had it, he had
been a young naval lieutenant
and his job was to carry this
rolled up map on foam rubber
around to brief commanders.
So, Eisenhower, Montgomery,
all of the commanders
of the D-Day invasion saw this map.
It probably saved lives.
It showed where gun placements were.
It showed where hedgerows were.
It showed where roads were.
It determined whether roads could
support an armored personnel carrier
or a tank.
It showed where these
fortifications were out in the water
to break up ships landing there.
And then after the war, he brought
it home and it was just a one
of a kind item and we
were thrilled to get it.
It's one of the things
we show everybody
when they come in the division.
The reason I like it so much
is everybody understands it.
Everybody knows how important
it is, whether you were there
or whether you just saw
Saving Private Ryan.
You can understand it.
This is the tip of the
iceberg in our collections -
one of five and a half million maps.
But certainly a really unique item.
We're the largest map
library in the world.
We have maps of just
about everything.
We have a variety of researchers
who come in - from the historians
who are obviously looking
for historical materials.
We have people come
in from embassies -
often times in border disputes
and we've had instances
where we are serving
two different groups,
the same maps on different
sides of the reading room
because they are both
looking at the same area,
but with a certainly
different perspective.
We have a lot of genealogists.
We have a lot of maps
that show landowners.
We have a lot of atlases that
will actually have biographies
of people and show their land.
We have one atlas that actually
shows somebody's cows identified
by name.
So, you can do all kinds
of research with maps.
Any history book is going to have a
lot of maps in it and if it doesn't,
it's probably not that
good of a book.
Maps give you a way of
understanding everything.
We have an Ernest Hemingway
map of the world.
We have a James Bond
map of the world.
We have all kinds of
things like that.
It's just a fascinating collection.
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us as loc.gov.