Open Access Databases: Maps & Atlases

A project of the William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture at The Newberry Library in Chicago, the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries is a powerful historical research and reference tool in electronic form. The Atlas presents in maps and text complete data about the creation and all subsequent changes (dated to the day) in the size, shape, and location of every county in the fifty United States and the District of Columbia. It also includes non-county areas, unsuccessful authorizations for new counties, changes in county names and organization, and the temporary attachments of non-county areas and unorganized counties to fully functioning counties. The principal sources for these data are the most authoritative available: the session laws of the colonies, territories, and states that created and changed the counties.

UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger is intended to raise awareness about language endangerment. It lists about 2,500 languages among which 230 languages extinct since 1950. For each language, the Atlas provides its name, degree of endangerment and the country or countries where it is spoken and information on numbers of speakers, relevant policies and projects, sources, ISO codes and geographic coordinates.

This geoportal connects users to digital geospatial resources, including GIS datasets, web services, and digitized historical maps from multiple data clearinghouses and library catalogs. Scanned maps from the University of Michigan’s Clark Library are searchable in the Geoportal.The interface offers both text and place based search options, and item pages display descriptive metadata records along with external links to download, view, or read more about the resources. This site is solely an aggregator and does not host any data.

CartOrient is a website for diffusing cartographical studies on the Caucasus and western and central Asia. CartOrient has three modules for viewing maps:
- an interactive atlas
- thematic atlases
- a library of digitized atlases and maps.

Regional and world maps from Central Intelligence Agency. The maps usually include two, and frequently all three, of the following country maps: Administrative, Physiographic, and Transportation - in both PDF and JPG formats.

Contains to date over 8,000 maps online and focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North and South America cartographic history materials. Historic maps of the World, Europe, Asia and Africa are also represented.

The Library of Congress has digitized thousands of maps for viewing online through their Digital Maps Collection. Browse or search by geographical area, or look for thematic maps in areas such as discovery and exploration, conservation and the environment, or cultural landscapes.

EarthWorks is a discovery tool for geospatial data. It allows users to search and browse the GIS collections owned by Stanford University Libraries, as well as data collections from many other institutions. Data can be searched spatially, by manipulating a map; by keyword search; by selecting search limiting facets (e.g., limit to a given format type); or by combining these options. Data are available from numerous research institutions across the United States covering a vast array of subjects and base layer information. Thousands of datasets in vector and raster format have been described at the individual layer level allowing for easy searching and retrieval. You will find both public and restricted data. The restricted data are tied to the institution that holds the content.

EJSCREEN is an environmental justice mapping and screening tool that provides EPA with a nationally consistent dataset and approach for combining environmental and demographic indicators. EJSCREEN users choose a geographic area; the tool then provides demographic and environmental information for that area. All of the EJSCREEN indicators are publicly-available data. EJSCREEN simply provides a way to display this information and includes a method for combining environmental and demographic indicators into EJ indexes.

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.

The library's geoportal that helps users find geospatial data in both vector and raster formats including scanned maps. Users can search both geographically and using a text-based search. Some data is restricted to UC Berkeley access only.

Harvard WorldMap is an online, open source mapping platform developed to lower barriers for scholars who wish to explore, visualize, edit, and publish geospatial information. The system attempts to address the gap between desktop GIS which is generally light on collaboration, and web-based mapping systems which often don't support the inclusion of large datasets.

This resource analyzes the current and emerging global political risk landscape. It covers economic, political, security, and social stability factors for countries around the world.

This is a prototype version of a Database which provides access to maps and other spatially referenced data for geology, geophysics, marine geology, earth resources, hazards, geochemistry, geochronology, and paleontology.

Find and translate 10,000+ newspapers from around the world. Search by newspaper title, language, place or address.

Old Maps Online contains more than 400,000 maps. A collaboration of many national libraries, the project is currently maintained by volunteers in cooperation on the framework originally developed by Klokan Technologies GmbH. OMO accepts contributions of old maps. It includes atlases, globes, topographical maps, and other geographic paraphernalia. The graphical engine is designed to accommodate geo-referenced overlays on modern maps.

Provides electronic access to approximately 4,000 maps for all regions of the world. Maps cover mostly the 19th and 20th centuries though some represent time periods as far back as 980 C.E.

A collection of over 2,600 cartographic materials by various UN bodies dating back to early 1900s.

This collection includes lists of archaeological sites that have been surveyed or excavated since Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967. Since that time, the oversight of the antiquities of the area has devolved on two government bodies: the military administration's Staff Officer for Archaeology (SOA) in Judea and Samaria and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The IAA, which is responsible for East Jerusalem, is a civil branch of government and its records are open for inspection. Some of the records of the Staff Officer for Archaeology in Judea and Samaria are being accessed in full for the first time as a result of the joint Israeli-Palestinian Archaeology Working Group. This involved a team of Israeli and a team of Palestinian archaeologists and cultural heritage professionals working in concert to create new data resources that document the single, unitary archaeological landscape of the southern Levant, which is now bisected by the modern borders.

Describes how to cite maps, atlases, and other cartographic materials with examples, from North Carolina State University.

Gives descriptions and examples of ways to cite many maps and atlases both in print and online. Discusses ways to distinguish between dynamic, static, and real time online material and how to cite it.

Gives descriptions and examples of how to cite maps, atlases and other cartographic materials.