Click here for recollections of the founding and growth of the Society from early members Sanford Bederman, Barbara Backus McCorkle, John Parker, Norman J. W. Thrower, and Carol Louise Urness.
The scope of the Society's activities encompasses the discovery, exploration, and mapping of the earth's land and sea surface from earliest times to the present - the explorers and the explored. Fields of specialization thus include the history of European expansion, cartography, navigation, colonial settlement, biography, and bibliography.
The Society's program of publications includes Terrae Incognitae, a journal of research papers and book reviews published annually since 1969, and five volumes in the series Studies in the History of Discoveries published jointly with the Newberry Library. For a listing of past editors and publishers of Terrae Incognitae, click here. In addition, the spring Newsletter reports current and planned activities of the Society's members and general news related to the history of cartography, discovery, and exploration. The Annual Report is issued in December.
Annual Meetings (sometimes held jointly with kindred societies such as the Hakluyt Society), are generally held in the fall and are two or three days in duration. They afford members an opportunity to present, hear and discuss papers on subjects in their fields of specialization; most also include visits to, or participation in, nearby points of interest and events. Click here for information on past and future meetings.
The records of the Society are kept at the University of Texas at Arlington. Click here for a SHD Records Finding Aid in A GUIDE TO ARCHIVES AND MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS in the Special Collections Division at The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries.
Click here for the Society's Articles of Association
OFFICERS FOR 2009-2010
PRESIDENT – Gerald D. Saxon Dean of the Library and Associate Professor of History University of Texas at Arlington 3409 Sheffield Drive Arlington, Texas 76013
VICE PRESIDENT – Ronald H. Fritze Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Athens State University 300 North Beaty Street Athens, Alabama 35611
Thomas Sander P.O. Box 10793 Burke, VA 22009-0793, USA
TERRAE INCOGNITAE
Editor: Marguerite Ragnow, Curator, James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota Book review editor: David Buisseret, Newberry Library
Editorial advisory board
Imre Demhardt, Arlington, Texas Ralph Ehrenberg, Falls Church, Virginia Francis Herbert, London, England Bruce Solnick, Lenox, Massachusetts Carol Urness, Minneapolis, Minnesota
