LibGuides: Guide to Online Primary Sources: Maps

Links to collections

16th- Early 20th Century Maps of Africa
Features digital copies of 113 antique maps of Africa and accompanying text dating from the mid 16th Century to the early 20th Century.
American Memory: Maps
Historical map collection from the Library of Congress.

AtoZ Maps Online
The world’s most comprehensive collection of royalty-free downloadable maps for schools, academic institutions, and public libraries. Maps available in a variety of file formats.

David Rumsey Map Collection
The David Rumsey Collection was started nearly 20 years ago, and focuses primarily on cartography of the Americas from the 18th and 19th centuries, but also has maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, globes, school geographies, books, maritime charts, and a variety of separate maps, including pocket, wall, children's and manuscript.

Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970
Access to more than 660,000 large-scale maps of more than 12,000 American towns and cities. Sanborn fire insurance maps are the most frequently consulted maps in both public and academic libraries. Sanborn maps are valuable historical tools for urban specialists, social historians, architects, geographers, genealogists, local historians, planners, environmentalists and anyone who wants to learn about the history, growth, and development of American cities, towns, and neighborhoods.
Fire Insurance Maps online (FIMo)
Important Note: access is available only for California, from the 1880's-1960's. A digital collection of historical color fire insurance maps, real estate atlases, plat books, and similar land use maps for North America. The maps show building structures, building construction details, property ownership, property uses, and other useful information. Maps include publications by Sanborn, Perris, Hexamer, Whipple, Baist, Bromley, Hopkins and others.

Historical Map Web Sites
Extensive list of links to historical map collections online. From the Perry-Castaneda Library.

Mapping Gothic France
With a database of images, texts, charts and historical maps, Mapping Gothic France invites you to explore the parallel stories of Gothic architecture and the formation of France in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Maps and Images (from the Internet History Sourcebook)*
Large selection of map images.
Old Maps Online
Allows the user to search for online historical maps across numerous different collections via a geographical search. Search by typing a place-name or by clicking in the map window, and narrow by date.
Pacific Basin Nautical Charts
Charts of the Pacific Ocean, circa 1910-1960.
Persuasive Maps: The PJ Mode Collection
"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...Maps in the collection address a wide range of messages: religious, political, military, commercial, moral and social."
Racial Violence Incidence Map
"Interactive map is a visualization of racialized violence in the southern United States between 1930 and 1954...It should be noted that the map, along with the rest of the cases in the archive, skew towards areas in which records of racial violence were made and subsequently discovered in an archive or other repository."
Topographical Collection of King George III
Printed and hand-drawn works dating between 1500 and 1824, covering a broad variety of themes, from the British Library.
World Digital LIbrary
More than 300 map images, dating from 8000BC to 1949AD and representing at least 100 geographic areas. Use limiters in left column to focus search on a specific geography, date range or topic. Also offers a keyword search box at top of page.