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Online Collections of Geography and Map

G & M Collections by Theme
	Map Collections of the Library of Congress The Geography and Map Division (G & M) has custody of the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world with collections numbering over 5.5 million maps, 80,000 atlases, 6,000 reference works, over 500 globes and globe gores, 3,000 raised relief models, and a large number of cartographic materials in other formats, including over 19,000 CDs/DVDs. The online Map Collections represents only a small fraction that have been converted to digital form.
	Afghanistan This presentation consists of a brief history of Afghanistan, from the Persian Empire to the early 20th Century, as well as images of related maps from the collections of the Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.
	Agnese Atlas Between 1536 and 1564 an enterprising Genoese chartmaker, Battista Agnese, produced in Venice a number of remarkably accurate and beautifully decorated nautical or "portolan" atlases on vellum for merchant princes and ranking officials. A version of this oval world map appeared in each of the seventy-one such atlases that have survived.
	American Revolution and Its Era: Maps and Charts of North America and the West Indies - 1750-1789 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 compte 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.
	American Women is a gateway--a first stop for Library of Congress researchers working in the field of American women's history. The site contains a slightly expanded and fully searchable version of the print publication American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2001). The guide has been redesigned for online use, with added illustrations and links to existing digitized material located throughout the Library of Congress Web site. [A direct link to the Geography and Map chapter].
	Abel Buell map David M. Rubenstein, Co-founder and Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, has given the Library of Congress stewardship of the first map printed in North America, depicting the boundaries of the new American nation and showing the "Stars and Stripes" for the first time. Webcast of deposit (Jan 2011). Full title: A new and correct map of the United States of North America : layd down from the latest observations and best authorities agreeable to the Peace of 1783.
	Civil War Maps A digital portal bringing 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.
	Hotchkiss Map Collection Cartographic items made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss, a topographic engineer in the Confederate Army (KMZ file a zipped Keyhole Markup Language). The KML 2.2 will work with: Google Earth version 5 or greater, ESRI ArcExplorer build 900, or NASA World Wind.
	Fire Insurance 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. The online checklist also contains links to existing digital images.
	Geographical Fun Atlas Humourous Outlines of Various Countries was first published in London by the firm of Hodder and Stoughton in 1869. The atlas consists of twelve maps of European countries, each with a unique national stereotype created by the author based on the the outline and shape of the country. Each image is accompanied by a short verse describing the authors creation.
	Gutiérrez map of America The late fifteenth-century landfall by Christopher Columbus on the island of Guanahani, in the Bahamas, forced open the gates to a whole new world for the Spanish and other European explorers. America, as it came to be called, became the destination for numerous expeditions and adventures from 1492 onward. Through papal bulls in 1493 and the famous Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal in 1494, the two Iberian powers laid claim to the entire Western Hemisphere, although to them the newly found lands were extensions of Asia, or islands off its coasts.
	Indian Land Cessions in the U.S. (1784-1894) United States Serial Set Number 4015 contains the second part of the two-part Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896-1897. (Part one is printed in United States Serial Set Number 4014.) Part two, which was also printed as House Document No. 736 of the U.S. Serial Set, 56th Congress, 1st Session, features sixty-seven maps and two tables compiled by Charles C. Royce, with an introductory essay by Cyrus Thomas. [A direct link to the 67 U.S. maps].
	Louisiana: European Explorations and the Louisiana Purchase 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.
	The Luso-Hispanic World in Maps Spain and Portugal expanded in rapid fashion from the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe, following the late fifteenth century discoveries along the African coast, the Indian Ocean, and in the Americas and Asia. New discoveries and exploration brought with them the need for improved information in descriptions and maps as the Luso-Hispanic world began to be formed in the early years of the sixteenth century.
	National Atlases of the United States The Nation's Cultural Geography in 1870, 1880, 1890, and 1970. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the United States launched into its great age of geographic self-discovery. Expeditions sponsored by the federal government to reveal the nation's physical and human geographies began with the Lewis and Clark Expedition under President Thomas Jefferson: between 1804 and 1806, it created a thread of geographic information that linked the Mississippi River to the Pacific coast for the first time.
	Macau: a Selection of Cartographic Images Macau, the oldest permanent European settlement in Asia, was returned to China on December 20, 1999. The Portuguese established this port on the southeastern coast of China at the mouth of the Zhu Jiang (Pearl River) in 1557, when they were the dominant power in European trade with Asia. Portugal continued its presence in Macau for more than four hundred years. In December 1887, after a series of negotiations between Portugal and China about Macau's sovereignty, a protocol was agreed upon which recognized Portugal's occupation and governing of Macau.
	Mapping the National Parks 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.
	Maps in Our Lives Celebrating a thirty-year partnership between the Library of Congress and the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM), the Maps in Our Lives exhibition explores surveying, cartography, geodesy, and geographic information systems--and draws on both the Library's historic map collections and the ACSM collection in the Library of Congress.
	Maps of Liberia 1830-1870 Includes twenty examples from the American Colonization Society (ACS), organized in 1817 to resettle free black Americans in West Africa, show early settlements in Liberia, indigenous political subdivisions, and some of the building lots that were assigned to settlers.
	Ortelius Atlas An important part of the Geography and Map Division holdings is its atlas collection, consisting of more than fifty-three thousand atlases. One of the most valuable components of the atlas collection is the numerous editions of the revolutionary mapbook Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598), a Flemish scholar and geographer.
	Panoramic Maps 1847-1929 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.
	Places in History Highlighting events in the U.S. Civil War (1861-1864) from 2011-2014 presenting maps and their significance.
	Places in the News Bringing maps of places in the news to educators around the world (archived back to 1999).
	Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteen- and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives portrays the early history of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico through first-person accounts, political writings, and histories drawn from the Library of Congress's General Collections.
	Railroad Maps Collection 1828-1900 Representing an important historical record, illustrating the growth of travel and settlement as well as the development of industry and agriculture in the United States.
	Rochambeau Map Collection Contains cartographic items used by Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, commander in chief of the French expeditionary army (1780-82) during the American Revolution.
	George Washington: Surveyor and Mapmaker Most Americans are familiar with George Washington's role as the leader of the Continental army against the British forces in the American Revolution or as the first president of the United States, but many may be unaware of Washington's lifelong association with geography and cartography. Beginning with his early career as a surveyor and throughout his life as a soldier, planter, businessman, land speculator, farmer, military officer, and president, Washington relied on and benefitted from his knowledge of maps.
	Waldseemüller 1507 Map of the World Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map grew out of an ambitious project in St. Dié, near Strasbourg, France, during the first decade of the sixteenth century, to document and update new geographic knowledge derived from the discoveries of the late fifteenth and the first years of the sixteenth centuries. Waldseemüller’s large world map was the most exciting product of that research effort, and included data gathered during Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages of 1501–1502 to the New World.
	World War II Military Situation Maps 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. The Interactive Essay allows for a step-by-step journey through the Battle of the Bulge using the U.S. Army's situation maps.