Subject Guide: Geography

Association of American Geographers
The Association of American Geographers (AAG) is a scientific and educational society founded in 1904. Its 6,500 members share interests in the theory, methods, and practice of geography.

Natural Earth
A public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.

Minnesota Maps Online
Historians, cartographers, and those who are just generally curious about maps often flock to archives and museums to get a closer look. Fortunately, many institutions have digitized some (or all) of their map collections and placed them online. The Minnesota Historical Society has created this tremendous collection of land survey maps, plat books and atlases, dating from 1848 to 2001. The search interface for the collection is quite easy to use, as visitors can search the land survey maps by county or township. Those persons who encounter trouble using the search engine can click on a small “Help” icon to get more information about performing a detailed search. The plat books and atlases are great fun as well, particularly the illustrated historical atlas of Minnesota from 1874. Through its 394-pages, the atlas contains interesting views of the state’s counties, along with sections dedicated to persons of note at the time, including prominent physicians, attorneys, “public men”, and lumber dealers. As the preface to this august volume notes, “…we can conscientiously say that we have strived to make it as near perfect as the circumstances under which we have labored would permit.” Truer words have never been spoken.