tulsaworld.com: Rare maps at TU may be worth more than one wants to know

tulsaworld.com | Research called more important than sticker price :

This historian and that librarian do not want to know how much these old jewels of maps are worth.

If it is millions, a far-off insurance company would dictate a vault, perhaps, and white gloves for handling. Or worse, no touching at all.

What is the point, ask librarian I. Marc Carlson and history graduate student Mark Dolph. Why have maps that tell stories if no one can pull them out and decipher them?

Three months ago, Dolph had sorted through the University of Tulsa's books and documents on the 19th-century American West. He is compiling a list of the McFarlin Library's resources on the subject.

He turned to the mounds of uncataloged materials. Past a locked door, past aisles of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, maps and atlases were sprawled across the tops of two stout, dark-olive cabinets with squeaky drawers. An American Indian bust and bright, floral works of the Claremore Rug-Hooking Society flanked the cases....

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