Housed on the third floor of the Main Library, the Map Collection contains more than 250,000 sheet maps, including maps issued by city, county, state and national governments, international organizations, and a variety of commercial publishers. The collection is international in scope. Subject coverage is broad and includes all geological maps transferred from the Geoscience Library. Rare maps include pre-1900 maps of Iowa, fire insurance maps for more than 1,000 Iowa cities from the 1870s through the 1930s, and a growing collection of pre-1900 world and celestial maps and atlases. The collection also holds German and Japanese topographic maps captured during World War II.
The Map Collection also contains over 150,000 aerial photographs of Iowa and over 5,000 gazetteers, atlases, and reference sources concerning maps and cartography. Desktop mapping software and equipment for small-scale scanning are available for patron use.
Many of the Map Collection’s resources are not accessible on-line. Please ask the Map Collection staff for assistance with discovering these resources.