The Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education (OML) at the University of Southern Maine (USM) invites you to participate in our spring 2021 crowd-sourced exhibition: "Where Will We Go from Here? Travel in the Age of COVID-19."

We are seeking the stories of people who currently reside in Maine of all ages (in general), and other interested participants from anywhere in the world, related to how the COVID-19 Global Pandemic impacted your travel plans between March of 2020 and March of 2021. 

Were you supposed to: take a long-planned trip? Study abroad? Go and visit friends and family? Go on an epic road trip? Travel for work? Go home? We want to understand where you were supposed to go, and how the cancellation of those plans impacted your personal and professional lives.

We will match your canceled trip location with a map from our collections, and pair your reflection with the map in our upcoming exhibition "Where Will We Go From Here? Travel in the Age of COVID-19" (in our gallery in Portland, Maine, and/or online at www.oshermaps.org). We seek broad community participation, and all ages are welcome to submit a response.  To participate, PLEASE FILL OUT OUR QUESTIONNAIRE IN ITS ENTIRETY; the process should take 10-15 minutes.

The exhibition will open in our gallery in May of 2021, and the digital exhibition will follow later this summer. 

Note: Due to limited space, only a selection of submitted stories can be featured in the physical gallery. We will feature as many completed survey entries as possible on the digital version of the exhibition.  We will contact you for more information if your story is selected to be part of the exhibition. Please do not fill out the form if you do not want your story featured in our exhibition.  

Thank you for your assistance, and please feel free to forward this opportunity to anyone who might be interested!

Warmly,

Libby Bischof, Executive Director