(12 February 2016) Over the past three years the National Library of Australia has been working through replacement of its digital systems. In January this year the new delivery system for maps and other pictorial formats was launched, and added to people’s ability to use the materials.
Nearly 40,000 maps from over 18,0000 catalogue records are now downloadable free of charge as high-resolution tif files. Most items have already been visible on the library’s catalogue, and on Trove. Now all digitised maps are available for free and immediate download in both the highest resolution (tif) and lower-resolution compressed formats (jpg, pdf). This represents about 5% of the Library’s total maps collection, from the earliest mapping by European cartographers, the early explorers and maritime charts, colonial settlement and pastoral mapping, land administration, town planning, Australia’s early topographic series, commercial, pictorial, wartime etc.
Downloadable maps can be found by chance on any search engine, or via Trove, or the National Library’s own catalogue.
IMIAMaps.org has the story in full plus links to the digitized maps.
