Glacial Deposits.indd - Department of Geography - Geology - Illinois ...

contemporaries of the key figure, the society, department, or the philosophy studied. Such
persons may include fellow geographers or other disciplinarians, previous students, relatives,
etc. My richest haul of such letters came from geographers and those interested in matters
geographic born in earlier years from 1880 to 1910 and included, for example, Ruth Baugh, S.
C. Gilfillan, Owen Lattimore, John Leighly, Raye R. Platt, Carl O. Sauer, J. Russell Smith,
Vilhjalmur Stefansson, T. Griffith Taylor, E. Van Cleef and John K. Wright. From the United
Kingdom valuable correspondents included R. P. Beckinsale, W. Gordon East, and Arnold J.
Toynbee; from Australia correspondents included Marcel Aurousseau and Oskar Spate, and
there were many dozens more. And here one must make reference to Maynard Weston Dow’s
Geographers on Film, the equivalent of “talking letters”—which includes some 550 films
featuring interviews with individual geographers, the filming of panels, papers at national
meetings, and AAG presidential addresses.
One builds a collection and in so doing one cannot avoid learning multitudinous details and the
genesis of large, sweeping thought contributory to evolution of the field. Whenever possible one
copies (by machine) significant correspondence; in the late 1950s frequently machine copying
was not available, and so one copied by hand. Today photocopying is provided by assistants of
the curator, though some holdings permit the use of cameras to accomplish the same ends. In
any case one needs to have studied the given task as much as possible from secondary
sources, or else once inside a large archival holding one will not be able to select thoughtfully
sheets that the investigator desires to have copied. Finally, one needs to do something
constructive with the archival materials accumulated. In my case, the current task is to complete
the writing of a history of United States geography, circa 1870-1960.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Geoffrey Martin presented the Distinguished Geographer Lecture at Illinois
State University in the spring of 2009. A native of England, he is Professor Emeritus of
Geography at Southern Connecticut State University and lives in Woodbridge, Connecticut.
Geoffrey Martin likes to immerse himself in his work. To
some, his home might seem cluttered. To him, there is only a
modicum of disorder in his archival treasury.
5