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Statistical Atlas of the 9th US Census (1870) now online in lots of places
The folks over at radicalcartography.net have just made available the Statistical Atlas of the 9th US Census (1870) as a bulk download. It’s great that this amazing government publication is finding interest by the public — and that the radical cartographers are doing lots of cool projects like Census Demographics.
However, it should be noted that it’s been available online for a while from both the Library of Congress and the Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER). And of course it’s also available in paper from Federal Depository Libraries across the US. I’d recommend that all you radical cartographers, cartographer wanna be’s, history buffs, data geeks etc get thee to your local Federal Depository Library to see what the Federal govt has published over the last 200+ years and also check out what your libraries are digitizing and putting online. You’ll be glad you did.
Presented here are all of the maps and charts from the first statistical atlas of the US Census, widely praised in its time and still a wonderful example of sophisticated graphics, the out-of-date racial/psychological nomenclature notwithstanding. The atlas is available page-by-page from the Library of Congress, but you can download it in bulk here.
[Thanks BoingBoing!]
Daily maps from National Geographic
A map a day keeps the doctor away right? Well now you can browse through history with National Geographic‘s daily maps site of historical news events and milestones. And they’ve even got an RSS feed.
Your feed reader getting too full? Thunderbird slowing down because of too many feeds? Then do what I do: tag it to your del.icio.us account with a tag like “daily.” Because each tag has an RSS feed, you can simply add the feed to your Firefox toolbar as a live bookmark. Just click on the orange icon (
in your location bar (upper right). That’s how I read GOVDOC-L too!
Map Collections – Treasures of the Library of Congress
The Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress is the “largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world, numbering over 5.2 million maps, including 80,000 atlases, 6,000 reference works, numerous globes and three-dimensional plastic relief models, and a large number of cartographic materials in other formats, including electronic.” Many have been converted to digital form.
The focus of digital Map Collections is Americana and Cartographic Treasures of the Library of Congress. These images were created from maps and atlases and, in general, are restricted to items that are not covered by copyright protection.
Map Collections is organized according to seven major categories.
One of my favorite collections at the LOC Map Collections site is the panoramic map collection. 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. These maps are also known 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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