Map Room - Skelton Materials
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The papers of Raleigh Ashlin (Peter) Skelton are located in Archives and Special Collections in the Queen Elizabeth II Library of Memorial University of Newfoundland. They were an unexpected addition to the purchased book collection and were kept, unprocessed, in a storage room until 1981, when they were organized and filed in archival storage boxes and the calendar was begun. In 1984 a more complete and more detailed listing was prepared, based on the one completed in June 1982, and a preliminary index was constructed. In 1986-87, during my sabbatical, further work was done on the index and both items were edited. During the past two years, there has been little opportunity to finish up this project. In the meantime, other items. have been found to add to the materials in the CNS Archives. Mr. Skelton used the books in his collection as an extension of his files, especially for copies of book reviews he prepared and for other material relating to particular books. Notes, correspondence, and/or copies or reviews were discovered as titles were processed which had not been done when the books were originally processed in 1971-1972 or when staff or patrons handled volumes added at that time. The collection has been used several times since it has been at Memorial. Users have been interested in specific projects that Mr. Skelton was working on at the time he died or had worked on in the past.
The collection of papers concentrates on the history of cartography and the history of discoveries, which were two of Mr. Skelton's major interests. It includes drafts of articles, reports and papers, as well as final versions in some cases. There is a considerable amount of correspondence with noted cartographers, historians, archivists and librarians. The index to the calendar provides a detailed subject approach to the papers, but some topics dealt with by major amounts of materials are English County atlases, John Speed, the Bagrow-Skelton history of cartography volume, the Antonio Pigafetta work on Magellan's voyage, and the Martellus map. The information unearthed in response to inquiries has been helpful to those who sought it.
Alberta Auringer Wood
Maps, Data and Media Librarian
Memorial University of Newfoundland
21 July 1999
January 30, 2009
Dan Duda
