Maps at the UVa Library   Tags: geography, government, maps  

Print Maps

The Library's largest collection of print maps are housed in the Map Room, Alderman 3 East.

The map collection is freely accessible and may be browsed by the public. Most maps in the collection circulate for a period of two weeks and may be renewed. Maps that are old, brittle, or encapsulated in plastic do not circulate.

Some maps may be withdrawn from circulation for periods and placed on reserve for use by classes at the University. Maps reserved for classes do not circulate.

Lost or damaged maps will result in a $25 charge to the user.

Digital Maps/Geospatial Data

In addition to print maps, the UVa Library provides access to many free and library-purchased map databases.  A listing of these maps can be found here.

In addition, The Scholars' Lab provides many geographic data sets and geographic information software to enable users to make their own maps and geospatial resources.  

Scholarly Resources will digitize out of copyright maps for faculty for teaching purposes, and also offers some general digitization for maps for a fee.  Contact digitalservices@virginia.edu for more information. 

Users can search for maps in Virgo, but this should be considered only a starting point. Many maps in the collection are not currently listed in VIRGO.  Most atlases are also not fully indexed in VIRGO.  Furthermore, because maps are an inherently visual medium, users may have trouble gathering from a text VIRGO record whether a map will suit their purposes.

• All maps cataloged in Virgo have the word “MAPS” in the Subject field.

• The geographic locations of maps (e.g., Kenya, Europe, Spratly Islands) are always contained in the Subject field.

• If a general keyword search does not pull up sufficient results, redo the search as a subject search in Virgo's Advanced Search page. Examples: "Poland Maps", "Bolivia Maps"