Penn State University Libraries - Geography

• Digital Collection of Pennsylvania Maps
• County Formation Maps - shows changes in county boundaries over time.
• Historical Maps of Pennylvania- This site features images of maps of PA from the 16th-20th centuries. It also has a "checklist of PA maps to 1800."
• Pennsylvania Color Landform Atlas
• Pennyslvania digital data (USGS ftp site)
• GIS Datasets for PA (Penn State Earth System Science Center site)
• PAMAGIC (Pennsylvania Mapping and Geographic Information Consortium) - This resource points to many county-level data sources.
• Penn Pilot - historical aerial photography from 1937 - date.
• Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access Clearinghouse
  

• CIA World Factbook provides political maps for countries around the world.
• United Nations Cartographic Section Web Site Maps and geographic information resources.
• Library of Congress Maps Collections online
• Perry-Castañeda Library: A large collection of online maps for locations worldwide.
• Geology.com: has satellite and other world maps
• Map Library of Catalonia:  A collection of over 5000 antique maps from the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya.
• The 1970 National Atlas and 2011 National Atlas are also available at the Library of Congress.
  
• National Geographic Society's MapMachine: Contains both a dynamic map interface (choose a theme) and scanned images from National Geographics's Atlas of the World (allows you to zoom in and out). 
• Google Earth or Bing Maps: Ability to search locations, directions between two locations and find local businesses at a location.
  
• Envirofacts Maps: EPA's data mapping facility providing mapping applications that allow you to generate maps that display environmental information for the entire United States. 
• Geography Network: Visit ESRI World Shaded Relief and World Sat Satellite Imagery in the Featured Content section.
• Global Relief Data and Images from NOAA: See the Images of 2-minute global relief.
• NASA's Earth Observatory Global Land Cover Maps
• Show/World:  This site generates cartograms that graphically show distribution of resources, populations, etc.  There is also a tool for the U.S. - Show/USA.
• World Bank eAtlas of Global Development - maps and graphs more than 175 thematically organized indicators for over 200 countries, letting you visualize and compare progress on the most important development challenges facing our world. Most indicators cover several decades
• Atlas of Historical County Boundaries - shows changes in county boundaries for the United States over time.

The Maps Library collects topographic maps for all 50 states.  They also have sets of topo maps on CD-ROM.

Many topographic maps are also available online.

• TerraServer - View topographic maps, relief maps, and aerial photographs.
• Maptech MapServer - Search by place name. Various scales provided.
• Maplink - Locate topographic maps (and map names) using map indexes.
• Topographic Map Symbols: This U.S.G.S. publication describes the meaning of symbols found on topographic maps. 
• USGS Topographic Maps Illustrating Physiographic Features
• Terrafly By entering a U.S. address, an aerial photo is retrieved. U.S. Geological Survey satellite data are used for the aerial photo of your selected location.  Topos are also available.
  

The USGS maintains an online list of all its topographic maps.

The USGS Store enables you to download the most recent quadrangles across the United States.  Different scales are available.

• Click on the Map Locator
• Type in the city, state or address in the search
• The location will appear with a red mark point
• Click on the mark point - a ballon will appear with the options
• Order or Download
• The downloaded file of the quadrangle can be opened with Adobe Reader

Locating Books on geography

To locate books at PSU on a specific topic in your field, search the CAT using a keyword search. (Search geography in the CAT!)  Never used the CAT before? Stop by the reference desk or visit Getting Started with the CAT for more detailed instructions or quick tips and tricks!

Browsing: Interested in browsing areas in our collection related to your field? Some books in your field can be found in the following call number areas:

• Geographic Names Information System: Database contains information about almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features in the United States. 
• GEOnet Names Server: Provides access to database of foreign (Non-U.S.) geographic feature names. 
• Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names: Contains more than one million names and other information about places, including continents, nations, historical places, physical features and cities. It emphasizes places that are important for art and architecture.
• Alexandria Digital Library Gazetteer Server: Contains data from the NIMA Gazetteer and sets of countries, U.S. counties, U.S. topographic map quadrangle footprints, volcanoes, and earthquake epicenters. The GNIS data from the USGS has been partly added to the collection.
• Global Gazetteer Version 2.1
• GAZETTEERS - A gazetteer is a dictionary of place names. By searching the CAT, you can find a wide selection of gazetteers. General gazetteers have a call number of G103.
• Complete Files of Geographic Names for Geopolitical Areas from GN.       (ISO/IEC 10646 [Unicode UTF-8] Compliant as of 18 July 2002)

• Data.gov  – A catalog of datasets produced by agencies of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government
• Social Explorer – The U.S. Census Bureau has created this site with demographic data from 1940 to date.
• About.com's Geography Topic Site  – Extensive list of links to geography-related resources. 
• Oddens' bookmarks – the facinating world of maps and mapping.
• Worldmark Encyclopedia in the Gale Virtual Reference Library.
• Geo-Data  – The World Geographical Encyclopedia in the Gale Virtual Reference Library.
• SimplyMap – a web-based mapping tool that facilitates the creation of maps and reports from complex data.