Cartographers and map enthusiasts, read on! An exciting announcement from the New York Public Library today: 20,000 historical mapsmany of the city between 1852 and 1922have been put online in hi-res and made free to use and download via Creative Commons. The library's Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division's new website and Map Warper allows users access to maps depicting everything from Central Park prior to Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux's 1870s redesign to a 1916 redraft of the 1616 Castello Plan that gave lower Manhattan its shape, says Open Culture. Piggybacking off of the technology used in Google Maps Gallery, Map Warper will also allow users to "warp" or "georectify" maps by laying them over and fitting them to their geographical context via Google Earth. The result is part of a 15-year effort to organize and scan the New York Public Library's map collection. Welcome to your new obsessionyou know where we'll be.
· New York Public Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Download and Use [Open Culture]
· Over 20,000 historical maps are now free to download from the New York Public Library [The Verge]
· Open Access Maps at NYPL [NYPL]
· NYPL Digital Collections Map Division [NYPL]
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