UWM Libraries

The American Geographical Society Library recently acquired the Karen Wynn Fonstad Collection, including the original manuscript maps of 'The Atlas of Middle-Earth'. A cartographer from Oshkosh, Fonstad was a lifelong fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. Upon her passing in 2005, Fonstad left her family an archive of nearly 1,000 map drafts, many of them based on Tolkien’s 'The Lord of the Rings', 'The Hobbit', and 'The Silmarillion'.

Read the full story: https://uwm.edu/libraries/2026/05/06/fonstad/

Thanks to the work of Digital Collections & Initiatives, the American Geographical Society Library has recently made available a digitized 1478 copy of Ptolemy’s "Geography."

Ptolemy’s "Geography" is one of the key geographical works of the Renaissance; it was lost to the western world until the early fifteenth century when a Greek manuscript was acquired in Constantinople and brought to the University of Florence.

The AGSL holds several volumes of the "Geography," dating from 1478-1900. The most recently digitized copy, made in Rome in 1478 by Arnoldus Buckinck, was one of the earliest printed editions of Ptolemy’s text, additionally containing 27 maps.

Read the full story at: https://uwm.edu/libraries/2026/04/23/1478-ptolemys-geography/

Access the digitized copy at: https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/ptolemy/id/3150/rec/2