This collection consists of thousands of bound volumes, including geographical atlases, gazetteers, guidebooks, and books on cartography and related topics. The atlases, collections of maps showing various continents, bodies of water, countries, regions, cities, and extra-terrestrial areas, which may or may not include text, date from the 17th century through the present day. They include works by notable mapmakers such as Jan Jansson (1588-1664), Joan Blaeu (1596-1673), and Thomas Jefferys (d. 1771). Gazetteers, or directories to place names and their locations, like the atlases, include those with broad, worldwide scope, and those with narrower geographical scopes. Guidebooks, or travel guides, are held as supplementary materials, due to their map illustrations and geographical descriptions of travel routes and destinations. Books on cartography include works on the art, science, and history of map making. Among them are cartobibliographies, lists of known published and unpublished maps pertaining to, for example, a particular cartographer, a depicted place, a place of publication, or a holding institution. Atlases, gazetteers, guidebooks, and books on cartography and related topics may also be found in other collections, including the Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection, and The Green Book collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The volumes in the Atlases, Gazetteers, Guidebooks and Other Books collection have varying provenance. Some come from the Astor and Lenox libraries, which formed the foundation of NYPL's holdings; others were purchased by the Library or received as gifts from diverse sources over the years.
