Map Collection Available for Internet Browsing

There's a collection of maps available at http://www.davidrumsey.com that has a lot of information, but there's a slow load getting there. The maps are from the David Rumsey Collection, and focus mainly on 18th and 19th century North and South American cartographic materials. When you get to the site, you'll be asked to select a Java view or regular view. If you choose regular view, you'll have to wait for the interface to load (apparently it's an DHTML/JavaScript thing) but once loaded you'll have a collection of thumbnails to view or search. You can search by state, author, keywords, etc. Double-click on a thumbnail to view it; a new page will open up with a larger image. You can zoom in and out of the page or print it. This is a pretty well designed interface, but these are good pictures of maps, which means long load times.

There are over 2,300 maps in the online collection right now, with the expectation that the collection will grow to 5,000 images by year's end, and 10,000 the following year.

Posted to Science-Geography