Collection of historical maps of David Ramsay

"Graeciae Antiquae Tabula Nova" from 1708

The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection of historical maps of the world is one of the largest private collections of geographical maps in the world. It contains about 150,000 maps and other cartographic items. The collection was created by David Ramsay , who, after making a fortune on real estate , focused on collecting geographical maps of North and South America of the 18th and 19th centuries, since it was for that era that the “rise of modern cartography” was most clearly observed ^[1] .

Currently, more than 55,000 digitized maps are available through Ramsay’s website, www.davidrumsey.com , and about 150 of these can now be played back through Google Earth layers. Separate maps are also available on the “Island of Maps” ( Rumsey Maps island ) in Second Life , as well as in 2D and 3D GIS. A new search tool, MapRank, has also been added, including a geographical search of approximately 12,000 maps from the collection by location and reach. The website has additional viewers from Luna Imaging, Inc., which became popular after the creation of the LUNA browser, which does not require any special plug-ins or software for viewing the collection, and, moreover, allows you to show enlarged fine details of the image, create a slide show, media -groups, presentations and more.

The site also has a blog in the form of a list: “New additions to the collection”, “Recommended cards”, “News”, “Video” and “Links to related sites”.

In February 2009, David Ramsay announced that the entire collection, including 150,000 maps and their digital images , as well as the database used for image tracking, would be transferred to Stanford University ^[2] . Stanford University will place the collections in the new David Rumsey Map center, which will be built in the main library.

And the site davidrumsey.com (where the images are posted online) will remain, as before, a separate public resource.