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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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].
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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.
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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.
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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. |
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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].
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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.
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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.
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The Minto Collection consists of fourteen important colored manuscript maps depicting various islands of the
Indonesian archipelago. The maps were formerly in the possession of Gilbert Elliot, 1st Earl of Minto
(1751-1814) and Governor General of India (1807-1814). This collection was acquired for the Geography and Map
Division by purchase from 1944 to 1946. These rare maps were probably drafted just after the British invasion of
Java in 1811. The British maintained control of the island until 1816, when they handed it back to the Dutch.
This collection also includes a large folder containing 35 plates (printed plans, charts, and views) from William
Thorn's Memoir of the Conquest of Java; with Subsequent Operations of the British Forces in the Oriental
Archipelago (1815). John A. Wolter wrote an
Occasional Paper in 1999 about the
collection. |
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. |
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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.
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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.
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Places in History Highlighting events
in the U.S. Civil War (1861-1864) from 2011-2014 presenting maps and their significance.
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Places in the News Bringing maps of
places in the news to educators around the world (archived back to 1999). |
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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.
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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. |
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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. |
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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.
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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. |
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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.
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