Map Collections - Early and Antique Maps

Broer Map Library historic map index (search engine). An index to many of the largest collections of online digital historic maps with a search engine to help users find online historic maps that can be viewed online.

Europeana.com. Explore the digital resources of Europe's museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. Includes maps. 

American Memory Maps. From the Library of Congress.

Bibliothèque nationale de France - Gallica-BNF.

Blaeu Atlas. The Toonneel des Aerdrycks, ofte Nieuwe Atlas of 1659, 6 volumes including the texts.

The Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes. Digital version of an Arabic treatise on the depiction of the Heavens and the Earth. 

British History Online. Six inch (1:10,560) Ordnance Survey County Series maps for Great Britain. Published 1844-1899. Some 25 inch (1:2,500) Ordnance Survey maps for large cities. Search by place name or via graphic indexes. 6” and 25” maps legends are also available. Can also view corresponding modern map and link to satellite view. Also 7th, 1848, edition of Samuel Lewis' Topographical dictionary of England.

British Library Map Library - Online Gallery

• Crace collection of Maps of London 
• Fire Insurance Maps and Plans
• King George III Topographical Collection
• Literary Landscapes -- Maps and topographical views related to the works of writers:  Jane Austen's Bath, Geoffrey Chaucer's Kent, Daniel Dafoe's Flanders, Thomas Hardy's Dorset, Sir Walter Scott's Highlands, William Wordsworth's Lake District
• Maps and Views - a miscellaneous assortment
• Maps of Africa
• Maps of the Americas
• Maps of Asia
• Maps of Europe
• Maps of the UK
• Ordnance Survey Drawings
• Topographical Drawings - Sketchbook Views of England 1750 - 1850 (3,000 Drawings)
• Unveiling of Britain - Early maps, 800 A.D. - 1600 A.D.

Cambridge University - Maps Department  See especially their list of "Online Maps - Old"

Caribmap. Images of Caribbean maps printed since the early 16th century including modern topographic maps. 

Cartographic Images. Images of maps from 6,200 B.C. to 1800. 

CartoMundi. A collaborative project producing a union catalogue of maps and plans of all parts of the world though originally concentrating on Mediterranean countries. Includes written descriptions of maps and map series, graphic indexes and, in the Digital Map Library section, some map images. 

David Rumsey Collection. Extensive collection of scanned images of historic maps which may be reproduced and transmitted for non-commercial use. Interesting article about the project here. 

Digital Archives Association. Produces high resolution images of historical maps on CD-ROM.

Digital Wisdom Inc. Antique Maps of the World on CD-ROM.

IKAR Old Maps Database

James Ford Bell Library -  Bell Digital Collection Search Page  - Historical Maps Page.  A premier collection of more than 30,000 rare books, maps, and manuscripts illustrates the ways in which cultural influences expanded worldwide, with a special emphasis on European interactions. The Bell Library, its collection, and its innovative programs support scholarship and education at all levels. The items in the collection currently date between ca. 400 C.E. and ca. 1825 C.E. 

Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog (KVK)

National Library of Australia - Historic Map Series

Newberry Library Cartographic Catalog (NLCC)

Oxford University - Bodelian Map Room

Policy Map

Royal Library of Belgium - Maps and Plans Collection

Simply Map -- SimplyMap is a web-based mapping application that lets users quickly create thematic maps and reports using demographic, business, and marketing data for the United States.


World Catalog Search Engine

OTHER RESOURCES

Dudley Knox Library Naval Postgraduate School. Lots of useful links especially to military maps. Many online maps.

English Jurisdictions 1851. Displays boundaries of different types for administrative units of 1851. Hosted by the Family Search website.

Faden's Map of Norfolk - digitally redrawn. View compressed images online or order a printed copy [CUL's copy is atMaps.aa.20.G.13-19]. Tom Williamson and Andrew Macnair have also written a book on the map [CUL classmark: S696.c.201.17].

France - Geoportal. Online mapping facility including modern and historic mapping.
http://geonames.nga.mil/gns/html/

Game of Goose - Giochi dell'Oca. Some of the printed board games shown on this site have a cartographic base. 

Genmaps. Old maps of the counties of England, Wales and Scotland.

Geologic Atlas of the United States. Published by USGS between 1894 and 1945. 

GeoWeb. Collection of over 29,000 cartographic and graphic images, with bibliographical details, available either in low resolution or high resolution with a digital watermark from the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice. There is also a list of their manuscript maps.

Gough Map. A zoomable, panable digital version of the Gough Map - which is believed to date from around 1360 - that is fully searchable and browseable by place name (current and medieval), and also by geographical features. Information regarding a location's geographical appearance, etymology, appearance on earlier maps, and much, much more is also revealed. Includes a series of essays.

Hereford Mappa Mundi. Excellent images with many ways to eplore the map.

Heritage Cartography. 19th century British town plans usually redrawn from Ordnance Survey maps. Limited viewing possible on website from which copies can be purchased. 

Historic Cities. Maps, literature, documents, books and other relevant material concerning the past, present and future of historic cities.

Historic County Borders Project. The project is digitising the borders of the historic counties of the United Kingdom at a scale of 1:100000 and making them available for public and commercial use. Includes a downloadable file containing all boundary data. [Note that county borders have changed over time].

Holy Land Maps. Maps from the Eran Laor Collection.

Ireland - Down Survey Project. Taken in the years 1656-1658, the Down Survey of Ireland is the first ever detailed land survey on a national scale anywhere in the world. Copies of these maps have survived in dozens of libraries and archives throughout Ireland and Britain, as well as in the National Library of France. This Project has brought together for the first time in over 300 years all the surviving maps, digitised them and made them available as a public online resource.

Ireland - Griffith's Valuation. Ireland's Valuation Office conducted its first survey of property ownership in Ireland from 1847  to 1864. This survey became known as "Griffith's Valuation" after Richard Griffith who was the Director of the Office at that time. It is one of the most important surviving 19th century genealogical sources. The survey was used to determine the amount of tax each person should pay towards the support of the poor within their poor law union. This involved determining the value of all privately held lands and buildings in rural as well as urban areas to figure the rate at which each unit of property could be rented year after year. The resulting survey was arranged by barony and civil parish with an index to the townlands appearing in each volume. On the website, identify occupants and display the maps. 

Ireland - Ordnance Survey Ireland. Access to historic digitised maps from Ordnance Survey Ireland published 1837-1913, plus recent aerial photographs and street map. Excludes Northern Ireland. Includes access to Lewis' 'Topographical Dictionary of Ireland' - a gazetteer - published in 1837.

Ireland - Valuation Revision Books. On the PRONI website. Fully searchable placename index to the Valuation Revision Books (VAL/12/B) covering counties Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone between the years 1864 to 1933.  In total, c.3,900 volumes were digitally captured, with over 440,000 images now available to view online. No maps. 

Japan - Cortazzi Map Collection. Housed in the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in Norwich.

Lincs to the Past. Integrated catalogues from Lincolnshire Archives, Tennyson Research Centre, libraries, museums and the Historic Environment Record, together with online exhibitions highlighting collections, learning resources, and more than 500,000 images, documenting thousands of years of Lincolnshire history.  Digitised documents include parish registers, probate inventories and maps.

London Maps:

• British Library Online Gallery. See especially the Crace Collection.

• British Museum. The Museum's Online Collection Database includes images of views of London. 

• Charles Booth Online Archive. Images and documents relating to Booth's survey into life and labour in London (1886-1903).

• Evolution of London Tube Map. On the Retronaut website. 

• Greenwood's Map of London, 1827.

• John Snow Site. A site devoted to the life and times of Dr. John Snow (1813-1858), a legendary figure in the history of public health, epidemiology and anesthesiology who was responsible for identifying water-pumps as the source of cholera outbreaks in London. Includes maps of London for the period 1818-1872. 

• John Strype's Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster. A full-text electronic version of Strype’s two-volume edition of 1720, complete with maps and plates, which depict the prominent buildings, street plans and ward boundaries of the late Stuart capital. 

• London Ancester.com. Maps of London, and some other areas, e.g. New South Wales, Australia. 

• London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) [incorporating the Guildhall Library's prints and maps collection]. Large collection of maps, views, etc. of London. Collage is their image database which includes some maps and views. LMA address is 40 Northampton Road, London EC1R 0HB.

• London Topographical Society. No maps online but the Society publishes some very useful facsimiles.
  MAPCO. Maps of London but also of British Isles and Australia. 

• Map of London. Stanford's 6 inch Library Map of London and its suburbs 1862-1871. 

• Maps-of-London.com. Maps of twentieth century London. 

• Mapping London. "Highlighting the best London maps." 

• Motco Image Database. Maps, prints and panoramas, mostly of London. View online, purchase prints or CD-ROMS. Includes, for example, Rocque's 1746 map of London with added name index.

• Old London Maps. Maps and images of London from the medieval period to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

• Victorian Dictionary. Maps of London published from 1827 to 1899, plus other information about Victorian London.

Manchester University Online Map Collection. Includes Manchester Blitz maps.

Maphist.com. Open information project for Map History. Includes images of maps. 

MapRef. An online source on non-printed reference material - including images - on the subject of historical maps & cartography.

Mapseeker. Reproductions of historical maps for purchase as prints, jigsaws, etc. Includes many Collins Bartholomew maps. 

Maps of the Past. "The Web’s Leading Source of Historical Map Prints". Images of old maps of which they have copies to sell. Many of USA.

National Library of Australia Digital Collections.

National Library of Scotland. The extensive online collection of maps of Scotland is being increasingly augmented by maps of other areas including six-inch Ordnance Survey maps of England, Wales and Scotland, and World War I trench maps. 

National Maritime Museum - Collections Online.

Netherlands - National Atlas. Internet version of the printed second edition and a trial version of the interactive third edition.

Network Rail Virtual Archive. Includes drawings by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, blueprints by Robert Stephenson and designs by Joseph Locke, William Henry Barlow and others. 

New Landscapes: Enclosure in Berkshire. Maps and land awards on this site show the process of enclosing the common fields of the county of Berkshire between 1738 and 1883. Lots of background information on enclosure. 

New Popular Edition Maps. 1-inch Ordnance Survey series from the 1940s (or thereabouts), making it the most complete and recent out-of-copyright mapping. Has a postcode-collecting interface.

New York Public Library - Digital Gallery.

Norfolk County Council Historic Maps Online.

Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library. "Established to provide free worldwide public access to an extraordinary collection of more than 200,000 original historic maps and 5,000 atlases that will be integrated with the technologies of Geographic Information Systems through its programs, exhibits, lectures and website".

Northern Ireland Place-Name Project - Placenames NI. Search for a place names and also for modern and historic maps from the 1830s. This is an ongoing project. 

oldaerialphotos.com. Historical UK aerial photography from the 40s to the 90s. Search for your area of interest by postcode, street name, city or grid reference. Photos are available for purchase BUT cannot see preview, even when you register. 

Old MapsOnline Portal. An easy-to-use gateway to historical maps in libraries around the world. Background information can be found at OldMapsOnline.org. - a research project which aims to develop software to assist in the management, manipulation and visualisation of historical map collections on the web. Provides free software and tutorials for online publishing of your scanned maps on your own hardware infrastructure - either as pre-rendered tiles (Zoomify) or in a dynamic form directly from your TIFF / JPEG2000 images. The software is open-source. 

old-maps.co.uk. County Series Ordnance Survey mapping online.

Old Hampshire Mapped. Historical maps of Hampshire. 

Old Sussex Mapped. Historical maps of the County of Sussex. 

OpenStreetMap Out of Copyright Maps. 

Ordnance Survey Books of Reference for Scotland, 1850s-1880s. 22 volumes of OS Books of Reference to the first edition 25 inch maps. For scans of the maps see the National Library of Scotland's website.

Ordnance Survey Old Series One Inch Maps. From the collections of the National Library of Australia. Published between 1805 and 1873. Also New Series published 1864 to 1898.

Osher Map Library. Plenty of map images and lots of other information too. 

Polish Mapping 1919-1939.

Princeton University Library Digital Collections - Maps. Over 300,000 maps and charts, aerial photographs, and satellite images accessible online. The digital maps and geospatial data can be searched, browsed, viewed, and downloaded. 

Ryhiner Collection. Click on 'Visit Group'. Over 16,000 high resolution images: maps, town plans and topographical views from the 16th to the early 19th century. A printed description of the items in the collection, plus an index, can be found at CUL classmark S696.b.200.254-257.

SABRE. Information on British and Irish roads. Includes scans of old maps, including Ordnance Survey and Bartholomew mapping. 

S & N Genealogy Supplies. Plenty of cartographic CDs avaiable for purchase. 

UNESCO World Digital Library. Includes pictures of antiquarian maps as well as other illustrations. 

Virginia Company Archives: first Contacts and the Atlantic World. The Ferrar Papers, 1590-1790, from Magdalene College Cambridge. Includes maps. Available on campus without passwords and off-campus with a Raven ID and password (off-campus users should follow the link marked 'The UK Access Management Federation' and not Athens).

Vision of Britain Through Time. An extensive site offering descriptive information on boundary changes as well as images of old maps, census data and travellers' tales.

Warsaw Ghetto. Topography of Terror: maps of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Wenceslaus Hollar Digital Collection. Featuring over 2500 of the prints of Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) including maps, portraits and historical prints.

Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny 1919 - 1939 Map Archive. Non-commercial project with scans of maps and geographic materials published by the Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny (WIG), Poland. Includes non-WIG mapping. The maps are mostly of Poland but maps of neighbouring areas are also included.