Most complete collection of state maps now online
RALEIGH – From wagon routes to interstate highways, dating from the 1600s to the 1960s, maps that show where travelers were going in North Carolina are now online at www.lib.unc.edu/dc/ncmaps, the new North Carolina Maps web site. A collaboration among the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources State Archives and its Outer Banks History Center with UNC-Chapel Hill, the North Carolina Maps website will be the most complete online collection of state maps in the United States.
“Historians, genealogists, students and teachers will find this a useful site,” says Druscie Simpson, head of the State Archives Information and Technology Branch. “North Carolina Maps contains county maps, city maps, and even maps of watercourses–rivers and lakes,” she explains.
Changes along North Carolina’s coastline due to storms and other factors are well illustrated in the online map collection. “We have a more complete set of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey maps than anyone in the country,” says Curator KaeLi Spiers of the Outer Banks History Center in Manteo. “These are very detailed maps of the coastline and soundings – the depths of the water including in the sounds.”
Many of these maps date from the 19th to mid-20th centuries and came from the collection of David Stick. Since the Outer Banks History Center is distant from many researchers, Spiers says it was important to include the maps from that smaller, specialized site.
The project was initiated by UNC-Chapel Hill, where it was recognized that the State Archives and the university had the largest map collections in North Carolina. The North Carolina State Library, part of the Department of Cultural Resources, got involved with a $414,077 funding grant from the ECHO (Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) program. This is the second year of the three year North Carolina Maps Digitization Project, funded by the State Library through the federal Library Services and Technology Act. Eventually the website will include more than 1,500 digitally reproduced maps.
“We’re looking at each map very carefully; we want to make sure the images are of the best quality,” explains Nicholas Graham, North Carolina maps project librarian in the Carolina Digital Library and Archives at UNC-Chapel Hill. He adds they want to be sure researchers capture all the information a map can offer. But what could one learn from a map of 1760?
“Those would have a lot of information,” Graham continues, such as the names of landowners, and “a lot show information on churches, schools, even what grist mills were there.”
The map digitization project will incorporate maps from other institutions as it goes into the third and final year. Currently about half of the planned 1,500 maps have been digitized and are online. The maps show how cities grew over time.
Fitting into Cultural Resources “Telling Our Stories” theme, lesson plans for K-12 students also are being developed. A special digital camera acquired by UNC libraries and a special camera acquired by the State Archives assure excellent images for the project.
The North Carolina Maps site will be easy to use. Just click on www.lib.unc.edu/dc/ncmaps and follow the outline. You can search by location, date, subject, creator, or all maps. No additional software or modifications are needed. The site was announced at a conference at UNC-Chapel Hill in August. Since then Graham reports a good response.
“It’s been great so far, from people around the country and around the world. A lot of maps show North Carolina when it was a colony, and researchers in England and map librarians value them.”
Although now available online, the maps remain available at the respective institutions. If a researcher cannot travel to Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Manteo, or all of them, it makes centuries of information available at the fingertips.
The North Carolina Collection in Wilson Library at UNC-Chapel Hill holds the largest collection of printed material on a single state in the country, and hosts the North Carolina Maps web site.
The Outer Banks History Center and the State Archives are within the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, a state agency dedicated to the promotion and protection of North Carolina’s arts, history and culture. Now observing “Telling Our Stories” and podcasting 24/7 with information about the Department of Cultural Resources available at www.ncculture.com.