by Mike Stevens, Senior Technical Services Librarian
Like many people, I have had a lifelong fascination with maps. I’ve been a collector of road maps since I was a kid. (Every gas station gave them out for free in those days. Really.) I have several thousand maps of all kinds in my collection. Some are from my travels, some from National Geographic Magazine, others came to me from friends who know I collect maps.
I never tire of pouring over images of parts of the world, the natural features and the ones that have been built by us humans. We have fashioned the world to meet our needs, built bridges and tunnels to span waterways, and drawn boundaries that have no meaning to other species.
There are literally thousands of maps and other cartographic images available online these days. Many of them have highly commercial purposes, directing consumers to retail outlets or to real estate for sale. Some are put up by government agencies, some by nonprofits and academic institutions, some by very useful commercial sites.
Those free gas road maps are not really necessary these days because online sites which help you out with locations and driving directions. Some of the most popular of these are Mapquest (http://www.mapquest.com), Yahoo Maps (http://maps.yahoo.com/), and MapsOnUs (http://www.mapsonus.com/). If you’re driving in Europe you can use Via Michelin (http://www.viamichelin.com/viamichelin/gbr/tpl/hme/MaHomePage.htm). There are similar online tools for Australia and other countries.
A lot of retail outlets for map publishers and map stores are found on the web. Maps.com (http://www.maps.com/) has links to many, many sources to buy maps.
The US government is a major producer of cartography. FirstGov.gov has a site
(http://www.firstgov.gov/Topics/Maps.shtml) which is a gateway to maps produced by a variety of federal agencies. There are also commercial sites that use government information and make some of it freely available on the web. TerraServer (http://terraserver.microsoft.com/) has aerial photos down to the resolution of 1 square meter. TopoZone (http://www.topozone.com) provides topographic maps from all over the U.S.
Many university libraries have extensive map collections. The Perry-Castaneda Library at the University of Texas at Austin has put up thousands of current and historical maps on their site: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/
Many maps are made for very specific purposes. This is true for printed maps or for their electronic equivalents. One of my favorites is the Subway Navigator
(http://www.subwaynavigator.com). The site has been around for about 10 years. It allows you to plan the most efficient subway trip in the underground transport systems of cities all over the world. In addition, you can view the maps of those systems. Paris and London have produced transit maps that I consider works of art.
Another fun site, especially for genealogists, is this site on county formations:
http://www.genealogyinc.com/maps/uscf.htm. You can view the history of how counties were formed in various states over the years.
Cheap Tickets is one of the online travel services that has a page with links to maps of airports around the world: http://www.cheaptickets.com/trs/cheaptickets/content/maps_driving/airport_map_search.xsl.
The City of Springfield’s Planning Department recently put up a site on which you can search for mapping and aerial photos of properties all over the city: Springfield GIS
(http://www.springfieldcityhall.com/gis/). You can also find out a lot about ownership, property evaluation, and other details from this site.