Quick Reference

Quick Reference

Geography & Maps

Columbia Gazetteer of the World
“[A] geographical encyclopedia of names, descriptions, and characteristics of places in the world.”

USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)
Almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features in the United States and its territories.

Thesaurus of Geographic Names (Getty Information Institute)
“Places in TGN include administrative political entities (e.g., cities, nations) and physical features (e.g., mountains, rivers). Current and historical places are included.”

Portals to the World
Selective links providing authoritative, in-depth information about the nations and other areas of the world

Maps

UT Library Online, Perry Castaneda Map Collection
A very complete and useful map site which, in addition, provides links to other map sites.

MapMachine
Census, topographical, aerial, street, historic maps and particularly useful, printer-friendly maps.

Multimap
Maps, directions, aerial photos.

TopoZone
Every USGS topographic map, orthophotomap, and aerial photograph in the United States.

Odden's Bookmarks: the fascinating world of maps and mapping
A huge collection with a great search engine from Roelof Oddens, the curator of the map library of the Faculty of GeoSciences, University of Utrecht.