Map collection

A map collection is a storage facility for maps, usually in a library, archive, or museum, or at a map publisher or public-benefit corporation, and the maps and other cartographic items stored within that facility.

Sometimes, map collections are combined with graphic sheets, manuscripts and rare prints in a single department. In such cases, the expression "map collection" refers to the whole of the cartographic collection holdings.

Even in medieval libraries, maps formed part of the inventories. According to scholars of the renaissance, maps were collected from the 15th century, either at the court or at naval academies to prepare for voyages of discovery. Over time, new techniques, such as copper engraving, reduced production costs, and assisted in spreading maps more widely.

By the 17th century, private map collections were often the basis for public map collections. As early as 1571, for example, the Court Library in Munich, Bavaria, (now the Bavarian State Library) became the owner of the Fugger collection. In 1823, the British Museum in London acquired the King's Library, which had been inherited and greatly enlarged by George III of the United Kingdom, and donated to the Museum by his heir, George IV of the United Kingdom. The King's Library included a collection of approximately 50,000 maps, plans and views, which are now housed at the British Library and known as the King's Topographical Collection.

In the development of public map collections, the geographical societies were important. They exerted great influence on the establishment and collection policy of such collections, or even stored their own collections at such institutions. So, for example, in 1680 Vincenzo Coronelli founded the Accademia Cosmographicae degli Argonauti, which existed until 1718. In Nuremberg, the Kosmographische Gesellschaft was established in 1740, while a namesake organization came into existence in Vienna in 1790. The Société de Géographie de Paris, founded in 1821, was the first modern geographic society.

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