Navigating Research at the Map Division: Getting Started at the New York Public Library: NYPL Digital Resources

The Map Division has created a number of Research Guides that you can use to help with your research.

To get to these guides:

• Click the "Research" tab on the NYPL Home Page. 
• Scroll down till you see Research Guides to Online Resources. Click that.
• In the following list, scroll down till you see "Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division" Click that, and you will see our guides. 

Available Guides:

Finding Places: Guide on how to use gazetteers and other place-name resources. Useful for locations that have changed names, varied spellings, and/or changed boundaries. 

Historical Travels: Guide on how to reconstruct journeys from the past, using maps, travel guides, time tables, and additional resources. 

NYC Metro Area Interactive Maps & Geographic Information Systems Resources: Guide includes links to a wide variety of digital maps on the Internet describing the New York City metropolitan area, including parts of suburban NYC, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Topics include architecture & urban design, communities & neighborhoods, the environment, transportation, and political boundaries.

NYC Urban Ecosystem Toolbox : Guide on primary and secondary resources regarding the environmental aspects of New York City. 

NYC's Early African American Settlements: Guide and resources regarding the four best known pre-20th century African American settlements in NYC

Remote Map Research at NYPL: Guide on how to conduct virtual research via the Map Division's collection

Other Guides of Note

Additional list of resources that reference staff from the Map Division has compiled:

• Fire Insurance Maps on the Web
• New York City Maps
• History of English Mapping Reading List
• Maps in Exhibitions

Under "Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy" in "Research Guides to Online Resources":

• How to Research a Family Business 
• New York City Neighborhood Research
• Old Time Tours - 19th Century NYC Guidebooks
• New York City Land Conveyances 1654-1851: What They Are and How They Work 
• Using Maps for Genealogy Research, Part 1: Finding Records 
• Using Maps for Genealogy Research, Part 2: Fire Insurance Maps - Exploring Space and Time 
• Using Maps for Genealogy Research, Part 3: Place of Origin and Immigration Stories 
• Using Maps for Genealogy Research, Part 4: Topographical Maps, and County Maps and Atlases 
• Using Maps for Genealogy Research, Part 5: Gazetteers and Finding Maps 

As a division, we also post blogs and recordings of past events, via our NYPL Blog! 

Topics for blog posts can surround popular topics or popular questions, while recordings can include past events and classes. Some examples of useful blog posts include:

• Navigating the Library’s New York City Maps,     
• Historic Central Park Maps, 
• NYC Rapid Transit in Maps, 1845-1921, 
• Absolute Sale! NYC Land Auction Catalogs in the Map Division, and 
• Collection of Broadside Real Estate Maps Announcing Auctions of Lots in Early 19th Century New York City.

In addition, scroll down, to check out some of our past recordings about materials in our collection!

You can also use Articles & Databases, as they pertain to your research. Under Subject, if you click "Maps, Atlases, and Geography," you will pull up a number of databases that are pertinent to our division. Please note, that Digital Sanborn Maps 1867-1970 does require a NYPL library card for access.

While using these resources,  remember that maps can be utilized with a number of other types of resources. Feel free to search this portal, to see if you can cross-reference material from other databases with maps.

• Example: Addresses from census records in NYPL's subscription to Ancestry Library Edition can be cross-referenced with material from Digital Sanborn Maps 1867-1970.

Map-Specific Databases:

• Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867–1970 NYPL Library Card Required: Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps are highly detailed city plans providing researchers with a wealth of information about urban change in American cities. These maps were originally produced between 1867 and 1970 for the purpose of assessing risk and cost of insurance. The Sanborn maps are arranged by state, then city and release data.  Currently there are over several sheets from city sets online in the following states: Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York.
• National Atlas of the United States: Nationalatlas.gov is the one of the most complete sources of national maps and geographic information for the United States. It contains an online map maker, dynamic maps, printable maps, articles, free GIS data, and additional resources for geographic information about the United States.
• National Geographic Virtual Library: Full content from National Geographic Magazine, from 1888 to the present.  Search covers, articles, images, maps, and advertisements, or browse by issue.  Also included are topic guides and Common Core teaching resources.
• National Map: The National Map is a collaborative effort among the USGS and other Federal, State, and local partners to improve and deliver topographic information. It has many uses ranging from recreation to scientific analysis to emergency response. The geographic information available from The National Map includes orthoimagery (aerial photographs), elevation, geographic names, hydrography, boundaries, transportation, structures, and land cover.
• SimplyAnalytics (formerly SimplyMaps): Simply Map includes thousands of demographic, business, and marketing data variables. 

Additional Databases to Supplement Cartographic Research

When conducting cartographic research, it is also useful to search through other general databases that the Library subscribes to. For instance:

• a general scholarly articles database might include some articles related to maps and cartography
• a periodicals database might have articles that are supplemented by maps
• genealogy sites might include records (i.e. the census, immigration records, etc.) that correspond with information on the maps

As such, please see below for a few examples of other general databases at NYPL that could include and/or supplement cartographic resources.

Scholarly articles and reference texts:

• Academic Search Premier: A multi-disciplinary database of more than 4,600 magazines and journals, including full text for nearly 3,900 peer-reviewed titles. In addition to the full-text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for 8,470 journals. Of note is that this database also includes content from such subject-specific journals as Cartographica and Cartographic Perspectives. 
• Proquest Research Library: Provides articles from periodicals covering arts, business, children, education, health, humanities, law, multicultural studies, sciences, social sciences, and general interest. Full text is available for nearly two-thirds of its titles. 
• Gale Virtual Reference Library: Gale eBooks (formerly Gale Virtual Reference Library) is an online library of reference titles for multi-disciplinary research, including texts related to American and world history, biography, health, arts, business, travel, religion, and multicultural studies. 
• JSTOR: A searchable, digitized archive -- from the first date of publication to the last three to five years -- of major scholarly journals in many academic fields.  Of note is that JSTOR provides discovery and full-text for one of the premier journals in the history of cartography, Imago Mundi.
• Business Source Premier: The Business Source Complete database includes full text business journals and magazines, covering all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, accounting, banking, finance and more. 
• Credo Reference: Provides full-text online access to hundreds of multidisciplinary reference book collections, including art, history, law, medicine, psychology, technology, bilingual dictionaries and encyclopedias.  
• Oxford Reference Online: Oxford Reference Online brings together language and subject reference works from one of the world's biggest reference publishers into a single cross-searchable resource.  Titles cover a wide range of humanities, social science, performing arts, and general reference subjects.  
• Project MUSE: Provides full-text access to over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly journals and top quality book-length scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Cartographic-related examples include Map Worlds: A History of Women in Cartography, by Will C. van den Hoonaard and The American Indian Quarterly's Trading Paths: Mapping Chickasaw History in the Eighteenth Century, by Wendy St. Jean.

Periodicals:

•  America’s Historical Newspapers: Searchable full-text and page images of newspapers from across the country including early newspapers, 1690-1922; America's Urban Centers Newspaper Collection, 1807-1880; African American Newspapers, 1827-1998; Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection, 1799-1971; Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876; and Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980; Early American Newspapers, Series 15, 1822-1879: Immigrant Communities.
• The New York Times, 1980-present: Full-text articles from The New York Times.   
• Newspapers.com: Newspapers.com is the largest online newspaper archive consisting of 300+ million pages of historical newspapers from 11,100+ newspapers from around the United States and beyond, with a special focus on full runs and portions of runs of well-known, regional and state titles in addition to small local newspapers. The collection includes a broad range of dates, mostly covering the 19th and 20th centuries.  
• Wall Street Journal, 1889-present:  Full text of the Wall Street Journal, 1984-present.  

Genealogy: 

• Ancestry: Access billions of names in thousands of genealogical databases including Census and Vital Records, birth, marriage and death notices, the Social Security Death Index, Passenger lists and naturalizations, Military and Holocaust Records, City Directories, New York Emigrant Savings Bank records, and African American and Native American Records. Library version of Ancestry.com.

Public Domain and Research Books

The Library, in partnership with Google, has digitized more than 400,000 books from its historic collection. These books published before 1925 are in the public domain and can be found here in Google Books. Additional public domain books digitized from NYPL and other research library collections can be found at HathiTrust.  Among these, you can find books about mapping and the history of cartography, cartobibliographies, and gazetteers to locate places on old maps. Some examples include:

• The History of the Survey of Ireland, by Thomas Aiskew Larcom
  • NYPL's Physical Copy: Click here
  • HathiTrust Digitized Copy: Click here
• Les Anciens Plans de Paris, by Alfred Franklin
  • NYPL's Physical Copy: Click here
  • HathiTrust Digitized Copy: Click here

In addition, NYPL has developed Digital Research Books, an early beta test of a new project that collects digital versions of research books from many different sources — including Open Access publications — into one convenient place to search. There are multiple digital versions available for many books (from various editions and sources or in multiple formats), and Digital Research Books makes it easier to understand the differences between them.

Image courtesy of HathiTrust. Franklin, Alfred. Les Anciens Plans de Paris. Paris : Léon Willem, 1878-1880.

E-Books and E-Audiobooks

Among the more than 300,000 e-books and e-audiobooks available to borrow at NYPL, there are some about maps.

Find accessible e-book offerings in the catalog- to do so, after you do a general keyword search, your results page will include a column called Refine Your Search. In this column, make sure to click either E-BOOK or E-AUDIOBOOK under Format.  Learn about downloading e-reader apps to your device at E-Book Central.

Here are a few examples of e-copies that are available to borrow:

• The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, by Simon Winchester
  • Available as an E-Book
• Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America, by Susan Schulten
  • Available as an E-Book
• Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution that Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality, by Bill Kilday
  • Available as an E-Audiobook and as an E-Book