LibGuides: Maps at Briggs: Online Map Collections

British Library Online Maps Collections

Maps of the UK This sundry collection of maps depicting places in the UK illustrates the variety of mapping produced primarily in the 19th and 20th centuries. The outstanding British map publishers are represented, as are "modern" themes of car, rail and air transport and medical and social mapping.
The Unveiling of Britain This selection of maps and views traces the growing awareness of the form of British Isles and their place in the wider world from 800 to 1600.
Crace Collection of Maps of London Over 1200 maps and plans of the capital: a fascinating collection brought together by the Victorian designer, Frederick Crace.
King George III Topographical Collection Over 2,500 watercolours, drawings and prints from the vast collection amassed by a monarch for whom geography was a personal passion as well as a professional necessity.
Maps of Europe This varied collection of maps depicting places in Europe spans the 17th to 20th centuries. The combination of early town plans and defenses, with 20th century topographic and military maps, illustrates the enduring purposes of mapping, while revealing technical and stylistic developments in cartography.
Maps of Asia A fascinating sampling of maps depicting places in Asia.
Maps of Africa A fascinating sampling of maps depicting places in Africa.
Maps of the Americas A fascinating sampling of maps depicting places in the Americas.

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

Harvard Map Collection

Library of Congress Digital Maps Collections

American Revolution & its Era The collection represents an important historical record of the mapping of North America and the Caribbean. Most of the items presented here are documented in Maps and Charts of North America and the West Indies, 1750-1789: A Guide to the Collections in the Library of Congress compiled by John R. Sellers and Patricia Molen van Ee in 1981. The bibliography contains approximately 2,000 maps and charts. Over the next several years many of the maps and charts in this bibliography will be added to the online collection each month. The maps and charts in this online collection number well over two thousand different items, with easily as many or more unnumbered duplicates, many with distinct colorations and annotations. Almost six hundred maps are original manuscript drawings, a large number of which are the work of such famous mapmakers as John Montrésor, Samuel Holland, Claude Joseph Sauthier, John Hills, and William Gerard De Brahm. They also include many maps from the personal collections of William Faden, Admiral Richard Howe, and the comte de Rochambeau, as well as large groups of maps by three of the best eighteenth-century map publishers in London: Thomas Jefferys, William Faden, and Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres. Historical cartographers can compare multiple editions, states, and impressions of several of the most important maps of the period, follow the development of a particular map from the manuscript sketch to the finished printed version and its foreign derivatives, and examine the cartographic styles and techniques of surveyors and mapmakers from seven different countries: Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Italy, and the United States.
Cities & Towns This category includes maps that depict individual buildings to panoramic views of large urban areas. These maps record the evolution of cities illustrating the development and nature of economic activities, educational and religious facilities, parks, street patterns and widths, and transportation systems.
Civil War Maps Brings together materials from three premier collections: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia. Among the reconnaissance, sketch, and theater-of-war maps are the detailed battle maps made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss for Generals Lee and Jackson, General Sherman's Southern military campaigns, and maps taken from diaries, scrapbooks, and manuscripts all available for the first time in one place. Most of the items presented here are documented in Civil War Maps: An Annotated List of Maps and Atlases in the Library of Congress, compiled by Richard W. Stephenson in 1989. New selections from 2,240 maps and 76 atlases held by the Library will be added monthly. Civil War Maps contains items from the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Library of Virginia, and the Virginia Historical Society. This presentation contains approximately 2,240 Civil War maps and charts and 76 atlases and sketchbooks that are held within the Geography and Map Division, 200 maps from the Library of Virginia, and 400 maps from the Virginia Historical Society.
Discovery & Exploration This category documents the discovery and exploration with both manuscripts and published maps. Many of these maps reflect the European Age of Discoveries, dating from the late 15th century to the 17th century when Europeans were concerned primarily with determining the outline of the continents as they explored and mapped the coastal areas and the major waterways. Also included are 18th and 19th century maps documenting the exploration and mapping of the interior parts of the continents, reflecting the work of Lewis and Clark and subsequent government explorers and surveyors.
Finding our Place in the Cosmos: From Galileo to Segan & Beyond
General Maps This category includes maps that typically portray the physical environment and a variety of cultural elements for a geographic area at a particular point in time. The maps in this category show a geographic area larger than a city or town and do not display a subject that is part of one of the thematic categories.
Hotchkiss Map Collection The Hotchkiss Map Collection contains cartographic items made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss (1828-1899), a topographic engineer in the Confederate Army. Hotchkiss made detailed battle maps primarily of the Shenandoah Valley, some of which were used by the Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson for their combat planning and strategy. Several of the maps have annotations of various military officers, demonstrating their importance in the military campaigns. The collection also includes maps made or used by Hotchkiss during his post-war years, including maps with information about railroads, minerals and mining, geology and history, most of which focus on Virginia and West Virginia, but also cover other states and even the world. The collection consists of 341 sketchbooks, manuscripts, and annotated printed maps, the originals of which reside in the Library of Congress' Geography and Map Division. A Keyhole Markup Language (KML) file was created to view the Hotchkiss maps in KML2.2; the zipped file (KMZ) is 41MB.
Louisiana: European Explorations & The Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase is a landmark event in American history, one that had a lasting impact not only on the size of the United States, but also on its economic, cultural, and political makeup. Before President Thomas Jefferson's administration purchased the territory in 1803, parts or all of the territory had been under the control of various Native American nations. From the 16th century onwards the Spanish and later the French controlled the territory. This presentation focuses on the various documents from maps to newspapers to cultural artifact that help to describe the region of North America that stretched from as far east as Alabama into what is now the state of Montana. The 119 items presented here come from the various special and general collections of the Library of Congress.
Mapping the National Parks This collection documents the history, cultural aspects and geological formations of areas that eventually became National Parks. The collection consists of approximately 200 maps dating from the 17th century to the present, reflecting early mapping of the areas that would become four National Parks, as well as the parks themselves. Production of this collection is being supported by a generous gift from The Rockefeller Foundation. Documenting the mapping of the national parks online is a project that has expanded through several stages. At the request of the U.S. Geological Survey, twenty-six maps of Yellowstone National Park were scanned to commemorate the park's 125th anniversary. The items included were selected by Geological Survey staff, and they became one of the first cartographic collections made available as part of American Memory. The criteria for choosing maps of three additional parks (Acadia, Grand Canyon, and Great Smoky Mountains) to join the Yellowstone collection in creating Mapping the National Parks included a range of geography and topography and their popularity as travel destinations. Acadia, Grand Canyon, and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks vary greatly in their histories of discovery, exploration, and development, as well as in their location, geology, and physical and cultural environments.
Maps of Liberia: 1830 to 1870 This collection of Liberia maps includes twenty examples from the American Colonization Society (ACS), organized in 1817 to resettle free black Americans in West Africa. These maps show early settlements in Liberia, indigenous political subdivisions, and some of the building lots that were assigned to settlers. This on-line presentation also includes other nineteenth-century maps of Liberia: a map prepared for a book first published in the 1820's by ACS agent Jehudi Ashmun, a map showing the areas in Liberia that were ceded to the society by indigenous chiefs, and a detailed map dated 1869 by a man thought to be the black American explorer Benjamin Anderson.
Military Battles & Campaigns This category contains maps showing campaigns of major military conflicts including troop movements, defensive structures and groundworks, roads to and from sites of military engagements, campsites, and local buildings, topography and vegetation. Some of the maps are manuscripts drawn on the field of battle, while others are engraved including some that have manuscript annotations reflecting the history of the battle or campaign. A significant number of battle maps provide information about the locality that is not available elsewhere such as the location of plantations, the names of landowners in the area, the configuration of small towns and villages, and indications of prior settlement by native Americans.
Panoramic Maps The panoramic map was a popular cartographic form used to depict U.S. and Canadian cities and towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Known also as bird's-eye views, perspective maps, and aero views, panoramic maps are nonphotographic representations of cities portrayed as if viewed from above at an oblique angle. Although not generally drawn to scale, they show street patterns, individual buildings, and major landscape features in perspective. The majority of items presented here are documented in PANORAMIC MAPS of Cities in the United States and Canada, second edition (1984), by John R. Hébert and Patrick E. Dempsey. Hébert and Dempsey compiled a checklist of 1,726 panoramic maps of U.S. and Canadian cities, the bulk of which were done by Albert Ruger, Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler, Lucien R. Burleigh, Henry Wellge, and Oakley H. Bailey who prepared more than fifty-five percent of the panoramic maps in the Library of Congress. Additional panoramic maps will be added to this presentation as they are acquired by the Geography & Map Division.
Railroad Maps 1828-1900 Contains 623 maps chosen from more than 3,000 railroad maps and about 2,000 regional, state, and county maps, and other maps which show "internal improvements" of the past century. The maps presented here are a selection from the Geography and Map Division holdings, based on the popular cartobibliography, Railroad Maps of the United States: A Selective Annotated Bibliography of Original 19th-century Maps in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, compiled by Andrew M. Modelski (Washington: Library of Congress, 1975). This annotated list reveals the scope of the railroad map collection and highlights the development of railroad mapping in 19th-century America.
Rochambeau Collection The collection consists of 40 manuscript and 26 printed maps, and a manuscript atlas, the originals of which are in the Library of Congress' Geography and Map Division. The Rochambeau Map Collection contains cartographic items used by Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), when he was commander in chief of the French expeditionary army (1780-82) during the American Revolution. The maps were from Rochambeau's personal collection, cover much of eastern North America, and date from 1717 to 1795. The maps show Revolutionary-era military actions, some of which were published in England and France, and early state maps from the 1790s. Many of the items in this extraordinary group of maps show the importance of cartographic materials in the campaigns of the American Revolution (1776 to 1783) as well as Rochambeau's continuing interest in the new United States. The personal papers of Rochambeau were purchased by an act of Congress in 1883.
Sanborn Maps The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online Checklist provides a searchable database of the fire insurance maps published by the Sanborn Map Company housed in the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The online checklist is based upon the Library's 1981 publication Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress and will be continually updated to reflect new acquisitions.
Transportation & Communication These maps document the development and status of transportation and communication systems on the national, state, and local level. Transportation maps can depict canal and river systems, cycling routes , railway lines and systems, roads and road networks, and traffic patterns. Communication maps illustrate the location and distribution of telegraph routes, telephone systems and radio coverage.
World War II Military Situation Maps This collection contains maps showing troop positions beginning on June 6, 1944 to July 26, 1945. Starting with the D-Day Invasion, the maps give daily details on the military campaigns in Western Europe, showing the progress of the Allied Forces as they push towards Germany. Some of the sheets are accompanied by a declassified "G-3 Report" giving detailed information on troop positions for the period 3 Mar. 1945-26 July 1945. These maps and reports were used by the commanders of the United States forces in their evaluation of the campaigns and for planning future strategies. The collection consists of 416 printed maps and 115 reports, the originals of which reside in the Library of Congress' Geography and Map Division.

Michigan State University

U.S. Census Bureau Maps

Census Bureau Interactive Maps

National Library of Scotland

Maps of Scotland
County maps
Town plans and views
Series maps
Ordnance survey maps
Geology maps
Soil maps
Land utilization maps
Bartholomew maps Maps by John Bartholomew and Sons
Air photo mosaics
Coastal charts
Bathymetrical survey
Military maps
Estate maps
Atlases
World maps

New York Public Library Map Collections

Atlases of New York City This group of maps includes the extent of NYPL's holding of real estate maps by William Perris (d.1862), the English-trained civil engineer and surveyor who originated the format.
Atlases of the United States The Map Division's collection of historical atlases of the United States, showing states, counties, and cities. Includes fire insurance, cadastral, geological, and pictorial maps, dating largely from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Maps of Asia The NYPL Map Division's collection of historical maps of Asia dating from the 17th century through the early 20th century. The collection includes general views as well as maps of individual countries in the region, including Turkey and India.
Charting America: Maps from the Lawrence H Slaughter Collection & Others In 1997, on the death of Lawrence H. Slaughter, part of his magnificent private map collection came to NYPL from his estate, as a gift from his family. In 2001, the second half of the collection was given to the Map Division. His collection of maps focuses on the Middle Atlantic region, and formed the basis for the exhibition "In thy map securely saile."
Maps of Africa Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division
Picturing America: 1497-1899 The major source for the images in this digital presentation-the Phelps Stokes Collection of American historical prints and early views of American cities-came to the Library in 1930 as a gift of the architect and historian Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (1867-1944).
Maps of Europe Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division
Printed Maps of Russia & Neighboring Lands 1 map - Date Issued: 16--?-1914
History of Greece FROM THE EARLIEST RECORDS OF THAT COUNTRY, TO THE TIME IN WHICH IT WAS REDUCED TO A ROMAN PROVINCE. ILLUSTRATED WITH MAPS AND PORTRAITS. FOR THE USE OF YOUNG PERSONS
Maps of Arctic Regions Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division
Maps of South America Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division
F. W. Putzer's Historischer Schul-Atlas Zur Alten, Mittleren Und Neuen Geschichte IN 66 HAUPT- UND 63 NEBENKARTEN
Military & Topographical Atlas of the United States INCLUDING THE BRITISH POSSESSIONS & FLORIDA.

Norman Leventhal Map and Education Center

American Revolutionary War Era Maps American Revolutionary War era, defined broadly as 1750 to 1800. This collection encompasses approximately 900 maps covering Boston and New England, as well as the remainder of eastern North America and the West Indies during this time period.
Boston & New England Maps pre-20th-century Boston and New England Maps Collection is the local region, encompassing Boston, Massachusetts, and New England. The collection consists of more than 600 maps of the city of Boston and approximately 1,000 maps of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and its counties, regions, and towns, along with 75 related atlases.
Maritime Charts & Atlases The core of this collection consists of 25 atlases dating from the 17th and 18th centuries and approximately 1,500 charts, most of which were published during the 19th century. Although the geographic coverage is worldwide, the primary focus is the coastal waters of the United States, especially the northeastern coast.
Urban Maps approximately 2,000 urban-related maps, with a special focus on maps and atlases depicting Boston and other Massachusetts cities and towns. Included are examples of the major types of urban mapping that were common in Europe and the United States from the end of the 16th century until the early 20th century.

Other Map Collections

Atlas of Canada
Atlas of Historical Geography of the U.S.
Atlas of Rural and Small Town America
Atlas of Historical Geography of the U.S.
Australian government maps
Bodleian Library Map Room of Oxford University Maps on the Web is a project of the Oxford Digital Library (ODL) that hosts images of approximately 450 of the Bodleian's maps, including many early and rare items. All of the maps selected are out of copyright, and all of the initial photography was undertaken by the Bodleian's Imaging Services Department
Digital Public Library of American DPLA maps come from many library collections from all around the United States and Canada.
Interactive map of Australia
John Carter Brown Library John Carter Brown Library is an independent research library located on the campus of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
Land Information New Zealand Topo Maps
Mapping at Canadian Geographic
Maps from Natural Resources Canada
The National Map (USA) As one of the cornerstones of the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) National Geospatial Program, The National Map is a collaborative effort among the USGS and other Federal, State, and local partners to improve and deliver topographic information for the Nation. It has many uses ranging from recreation to scientific analysis to emergency response.
New York City Subway Historical Map Collection Maps from 1880 to the present of the New York City Subway.
Old Maps Online
Online maps from libraries and archives around the world.
Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine This collection is in its early stages. USM is digitizing its globe collection. The digitized version is interactive.
Perry-Castaneda Library (University of Texas) map collection
Persuasive Cartography at Cornell University This is a collection of “persuasive” cartography: more than 800 maps intended primarily to influence opinions or beliefs - to send a message - rather than to communicate geographic information. The collection reflects a variety of persuasive tools, including allegorical, satirical and pictorial mapping; unusual use of projections, color, graphics and text; and intentional deception. Maps in the collection address a wide range of messages: religious, political, military, commercial, moral and social.
Streetmap (UK) Put a street name, postal code, or location in the search and get a street map of the area.
United Nations Maps

United States Geographic Survey Maps

USGS Topo Maps TopoView highlights one of the USGS's most important and useful products, the topographic map. In 1879, the USGS began to map the Nation's topography. The maps shown through topoView are from the USGS’s US Topo series and earlier Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC). The term “US Topo” refers specifically to quadrangle topographic maps published in 2009 and later. These maps are modeled on the familiar 7.5-minute quadrangle maps of the period 1947-1992, but are mass-produced from national GIS databases on a repeating cycle.
Coasts Discover the science we are conducting to learn more about our coasts.
Geology Learn more about what science is being conducted to learn more about geologic processes, erosion, faulting, folding, geochemistry, geologic mapping, land subsidence, plate tectonics, rock deformation, sedimentation, soil chemistry, and more.
Land Resources This science includes the long-term alteration in the characteristic weather conditions of a region, such as changes in precipitation and temperature.
Oceans Learn more about what science is being conducted to learn more about our oceans.
USGS Geological Survey Maps by Topic
Topics include:
*Biology,
*Citizen Science,
*Climate,
*Coasts,
*Ecosystems,
*Energy,
*Geology,
*Information Systems,
*Maps and Mapping,
*Methods and Analyses,
*Minerals,
*Natural Hazards,
*Ocean,
*Planetary Science,
*Science Technology,
*Water
Sort the USGS maps by type, topic, year, and location.

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