Blog Post
First Woman to Row Alone Across an Ocean
by annevm
Tori Murden McClure has an AB from Smith College, a master’s in divinity from Harvard, a JD from the University of Louisville, and an MFA from Spalding University. Very impressive -- as is her new book, A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean. Currently vice president at Spalding, McClure is the first woman to row alone across an ocean. This beautifully written memoir offers readers a spectacular blend of adventure, romance, and self discovery.
Blog Post
Vacations to Enrich Your Life
by darla
On our new book shelf here at the AADL you can pick up a copy of The 100 Best Worldwide Vacations to Enrich Your Life, written by Pam Grout & published by National Geographic. The author's intent, as she states in the introduction, is to alter your idea of what vacation is meant to be and offer you the potential to change your life. The experiences are divided into four categories: arts and crafts getaways, learning retreats, volunteer vacations, and wellness escapes. Even if you can't afford some of the fabulous ideas set forth in this book, it's still enjoyable to read about them. Consider a three-day mahout (elephant wrangler) training course in Thailand. Spend a month working for African Impact, a lion rehabilitation center in Zimbabwe. Master the art of blending scotch at the Glengoyne Distillery in the Scottish highlands. Ride horses to Machu Picchu's sacred sister city, Choquequirao, Peru.
The trip that caught my attention is run by COBATI (Community-Based Tourism Initiatives) in Kampala, Uganda. Instead of a typical African safari package that does little to benefit the locals, COBATI homestays offer the amazing opportunity to stay in small, rural villages and learn about the real Uganda. Visit banana plantations, stay with midwives, learn beekeeping & mushroom growing, attend community weddings, visit flower farms and see homesteads with Ankole longhorn cattle (indigenous to Uganda for at least seven centuries). Interested? Visit www.cobati.or.ug or head to the library for a copy of this unique travel guide.
Blog Post
Map Library Open House Thursday, March 19th!
by Liberry Shortstack
Interested in maps? Art? How about artistic maps? The University of Michigan Map Library is holding an open house tomorrow, March 19th, from 4pm-7pm. The Map Library is on the 8th floor of the Harlan Hatcher Library on UM's central campus. Come for the maps, stay for the exhilarating view of campus! Map Library staff will be available to answer any questions you might have about the maps on display or the collection in general.
The Map Library holds these open houses the 3rd Thursday of each month.
Light refreshments will be served.
Blog Post
1,000 Ultimate Travel Experiences
by darla
Whether you are a well-seasoned traveller with a mangled passport, or someone who rarely leaves your spot on the couch, it's likely you will find inspiration in A Rough guide to the world. This hefty book is crammed full of amazing travel experiences grouped according to global areas, starting with Britain & Ireland, and finishing with The Polar Regions (you didn't think they'd forget the North and South Pole, did you?). Seeking a natural miracle? Visit Iguazu Falls in Argentina - more than two hundred cascades thundering over an eighty meter cliff, all surrounded by lush tropical forest. Seeking an event to remember? Try April 30th/Queen's Day in Amsterdam (police are forbidden to interfere with any activity, no matter how outrageous). Seeking a wonder of the ancient world? Try the unparalleled Roman archaeological site of Baalbek in Lebanon. (In the words of Robert Byron, it "dwarfs New York into a home of ants".) Seeking a journey closer to home? Grab your bike and ride the Slickrock in Moab, Utah. Personally, I am inspired to plan a visit to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Lalibela in Ethiopia. I'll share my injera with you if you'll pay for my plane ticket!
Blog Post
Beijing Olympics
by muffy
If you are heading to Beijing to support our atheletes, you might want to check out this blog site before packing your bags. Globespotters offers urban advice from reporters who live there.
Beijing Basics are for smart travelers who plan ahead - with information from airports, getting into town, using the subways, to finding an English-speaking doctor.
If your travel plans include other equally exotic locales such as Mumbai, Bangkok, Moscow or Istanbul, you will be glad you did you homework. Travel safe.
Blog Post
Google Maps for Ann Arbor has Street Views
by Van
Type in an address in Ann Arbor in Google Maps and you can now see the Street View.
Street View gives you a photographic view of the street and allows you to move up and down the block and to pan to the right or left and to zoom in on houses or businesses or pedestrians. The gas station at Packard and Stadium has gas for sale for $2.89/gallon so the drive-by must have been a while ago. It was garbage day at my house. You can see the garbage bin, the recycle bins, and the compost bin in front of the house. The addresses on streets are approximate so you may have to move up or down the block to find the address you are seeking.
Arbor Update has a blog about Street View. Trying to sleuth the exact date/dates seems to be one of the pleasures for users. Some areas appear to have been covered on a football Saturday.
Take a look. Interesting and fun. The Michigan Theater was showing Born into Brothels. You cannot quite read the menu posted outside Zanzibar. The Y is still standing across from the Downtown Library.
Blog Post
Maps at the Downtown Library
by Van
The Downtown Library has folding and flat maps on the Second Floor.
All the folding maps circulate for four weeks and some of the flat maps do (the ones that do not have a Reference label).
The most recent batch of additional maps focused on Europe and Central and South America. The international maps in the folding map files are filed under the country. Maps for the states of New York, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio were also purchased.
Mapping the world onto a flat surface requires the selection of a projection, an orientation, and a projection surface. The Upside Down World Map (World folding map file) has Australia and New Zealand centered at the top of the map. The Peters World Map (World folding map file) is centered on the Pacific Ocean and uses an equal-area projection that provides a very different view of the World than the standard Atlantic Ocean centered Mercator projection map. In the flat map case is a World Map from National Geographic with a lovely antiqued look that uses four circles to map the world: the Western Hemisphere, the Eastern Hemisphere, the South Polar Region, and the North Polar Region.
Blog Post
Map of Washtenaw County Indian trails
by amy
Click image for larger view. A key to trails and historical markers appears below the map image.
We recently spruced up the Making of Ann Arbor site with a new design and some additional content, including a map of Indian trails in Washtenaw County taken from the 1927 book The Indians of Washtenaw County, Michigan by W. B. Hinsdale. This map and others are available on the Making of Ann Arbor maps page. Additional maps and atlases of Washtenaw county are available through the Michigan County Histories and Atlases digitization project.
Blog Post
Sanborn Maps
by wheloc
Want to know more about your house? Then you need the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. These indispensable tools for historical cartographic research were created by the Sanborn Map and Publishing Company to help fire insurance companies find who they needed to bill and what they needed to pay, they now serve as an important record of America's urbanization.
The maps cover some 12,000 cities and towns across the country and were published from 1867 to 1970. Many libraries and historical societies will carry maps of their surrounding areas. The Ann Arbor District Library has copies (on micro film) for Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Dexter, Manchester, Milan, Saline, and Ypsilanti (with dates from 1884 to 1948). They can be found in the micro film drawers (2nd floor, way behind the periodicals desk).
Blog Post
Mapping Michigan Roads
by Debbie G.
The Michigan State University libraries have mounted another stellar online history exhibit, Footpaths to Freeways: The Evolution of Michigan Roadmaps. The exhibit traces how roads have been depicted on Michigan maps from the time it was a territory to the present. In addition to maps, it includes photographs, unique short-lived route guides and artifacts. Visit the physical exhibit in the MSU Main Library, 4th Floor West Wing Exhibit Cases March - June 2007.