 One of the most unique items housed at the University of Tennessee Libraries is a 10-foot long relief map of the state of Tennessee. The UT Agricultural Experiment Station commissioned this map in 1897 to summarize the results of its six-year study of Tennessee soils. UT's relief map was made by a well-known commercial map and model maker of the day, Edwin Eugene Howell. Howell was, in fact, a pioneer of terrain modeling in the United States. It is said that he produced the first relief map ever made in America. Our relief map is being restored by object conservator Eva Conwell. Here we have the map made by Edwin Howell in 1897. As far as we know this map has always been in the possession of the Geological Institute at the University and probably has been used as a teaching material for a long time and it sustained quite a bit of damage. The goal that the curators and I sort of discussed together and that's also still evolving is not to make it look as it was in 1897 but just to improve the looks in a way that it still looks like an antique map that seemed a lot of use and history but that it looks a little better and that the damage is not distracting from the appreciation of the map. I make my own little cotton swabs. I could also use q-tips but they are almost too big for this process so I have a bamboo stick and I use varying amounts of cotton wool and I tried many different solvents to see what would remove the varnish without removing the paint and it's a bit of luck whether you can find a solvent. If they are both too similar then that just wouldn't be possible but I was lucky I can use ethanol just normal alcohol and it will dissolve the shellac but it will not attack the paint. And you can imagine that's a very slow process and I have already spent many hours removing the coating. For example this area here that has no coating on it right now you may be able to see that the pink there is a little fresher and the blue and there are some areas that after I've removed the coating are a little too bright and in the end I may go over those again with another, a modern coating that does not yellow and I may even tint it just a little bit to match the other coating because what we want is a sort of integrated look where nothing stands out and then there's a lot of abrasion and that's pretty common for a map like that that's been around for a long time so for example many of the mountain tops are actually leveled. An example where a mountain top is missing is this area let me get something to point it this area here it's a little different green from the surroundings and the reason is because somebody painted over it it would have you know the mountain top was gone it was white so as a quick fix somebody just painted over it and there are many areas like that right now we are thinking that we just may leave them and not try to reconstruct them because that you know it's part of the history of the map one might say created our Tennessee relief map he was running a successful business in Washington DC called Howell's microcosm selling geological specimens as well as his relief maps 20 years earlier Howell had served as a geologist on two of the great surveys of the American west these government sponsored expeditions to explore and map the vast western territories were the predecessors of the United States geological survey in 1872 and 1873 Edwin Howell was a member of Wheeler's survey west of the 100th Meridian and in 1875 he joined John Wesley Powell's survey of the Rocky Mountain region that same year Edwin Howell created a terrain model of the Grand Canyon that was exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Fair at Philadelphia our Tennessee map and its creator have interesting histories this is just one of the many treasures you'll find here in our libraries when the conservation treatment is complete we'll hang this map in honor of the Malicoat family and their many contributions to the library and this great university thank you to the Malicoat family and all our friends who help us preserve and acquire these great treasures Go Vols!