MSU Libraries

This map shows the extent of European knowledge of African geography in 1841. Names of regions and places are almost entirely along the coasts, leaving the interior blank. One exception is some fairly good understanding of the oases and settlements across the Sahara. This map lacks busy details to fill unknown areas. Map-makers were by now content to leave areas of insufficient or conflicting reports...

The University of Michigan has almost two boxes of food and we don't have any. We need to catch up! Bring in your non-perishable food, household and personal items to the Business Library to donate to the MSU Food Bank. See our web site for more information: http://www.lib.msu.edu/features/?e=329.

Go Green! Let's beat the University of Michigan!

The map depicts all the French controlled lands in North America, from Acadia in the north through the Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The extensive text describes the territory they control, the history of its discovery, and names their numerous Native American allies.

The Lake Superior islands have gotten so big that that it hardly seems like a canoe...

The Bergens were among the original settlers of a remote place called Breuklen, New Netherlands, which was later called Brooklyn, New York. For several generations this Norse/Dutch family worked their own farmland. Eventually the economic reach of New York City altered farming in Brooklyn from field crops to more profitable vegetables. As farm income and therefore land values rose, the Bergens and other such families...