History 162: Latin America to 1825: Find Maps and Images

How to find licensed and public domain images.

The David Rumsey Map Collection was started over 35 years ago and contains more than 150,000 maps. The collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. Digitization of the collection began in 1996 and there are now over 125,000 items online, with new additions added regularly. The site is free and open to the public. Here viewers have access not only to high resolution images of maps that are extensively cataloged, but also to a variety of tools that allow users to compare, analyze, and view items in new and experimental ways.

The Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress provides cartographic and geographic information for all parts of the world to Congress, Federal agencies, state and local governments, the scholarly community, and to the general public. The collection of single maps embraces more than two million general and special subject maps of the world and its various political entities, divisions, and subdivisions, with maps of the Americas and countries of the Western Hemisphere predominating.

dLOC (Digital Library of the Caribbean) is a cooperative of Partners within the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean that provides users with access to Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials held in archives, libraries, and private collections.

A digital collection of the University of Texas at Austin.

The Vistas project seeks to bring an understanding of the visual culture of Spanish America to a broad audience. Spanish America was an extensive region—covering much of the Americas, running from California to Chile from the 16th century to the early 19th century. Its visual culture was forged in urban centers, religious and frontier communities, and indigenous towns. The Vistas website offers access in English and Spanish to a small part of the project, with a gallery of low-resolution color images, interpretive essays and a searchable bibliography on visual culture.