Research Guides: Geography: Mapping & Visualization

Tools for Mapping & Visualization of Data

Worldmapper
Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest. Below is an example of a map resized based on the amount of rainfall received per year (in cubic kilometres of water per year).

© Copyright Sasi Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).

New York Public Library Digital Collections
Access to over 800,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more. Usage rights are posted with each image.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
"The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. Far more than a search engine, the portal provides innovative ways to search and scan through the united collection of millions of items, including by timeline, map, virtual bookshelf, format, subject, and partner."
Library of Congress Arts & Culture Collection
Exhibitions created by the LOC are organized by subject area. Each exhibition includes photos and other content along with any associated public programs.

American Memory This link opens in a new window
American Memory is a gateway to the Library of Congress's vast resources of digitized American historical materials which include manuscripts, prints, photographs, posters, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, and sheet music. Collections may be browsed individually, searched individually (including full-text searching for many written items), or searched across multiple collections.

Pixabay Public Domain Images "All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty-free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required."
Flickr Commons Searches across image collections from a variety of libraries and other archives like the Smithsonian. A wealth of treasures, with clear statements about copyright restrictions for each image.
Flickr This photo sharing site is a great place to look for visual materials. Make sure to use the search tools to limit to material with a creative commons license or items without any copyright restrictions.
NASA Images Because NASA is part of the US government their images do not have any copyright and are part of the public domain.
Wikimedia Commons "Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone."
Google Images Search for images across the web. Make use of the search tool option to limit your search to items with creative commons licenses for re-use.