4 - UK Government Agencies, OS and Gazetteers
UK Government Agencies
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Ordnance Survey (OS)
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Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi)
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Multi-Agency Geographic Information for the Countryside (MAGIC) - Provides geographic information about the natural environment from across government
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Office for National Statistics and UK National Statistics. Also Office for National Statistics guide to boundaries and other geography products
Ordnance Survey resources
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The Ordnance Survey is the national mapping agency for Britain
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The Charles Close Society for the study of Ordnance Survey Maps has many useful publications and an information-packed newsletter and website
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Ordnance Survey list of triangulation points (released to the GPS Community)
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Summary lists of 1:50,000 (Landranger) maps and New Popular and Seventh Series maps - and more - by Leslie Watson.
Dealers in OS mapping
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Advice on obtaining new and old OS mapping can be found in the MS Word document: 1D - Where to buy Ordnance Survey maps (MS Word document) by Anne Taylor of Cambridge University Library
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Or try OS OpenData
Second hand, Reproduction and Digitised OS Maps
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​Alan Godfrey Maps - Publisher of reduced reproductions of OS maps, mainly 1:2,500 county series maps, with text describing local history, etc
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David Archer Maps - Holds extensive stocks of used maps mostly at six-inch and the smaller scales
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National Library of Scotland Map Library (NLS) has digitised a substantial number of maps, including many Ordnance Survey maps. The easiest way to find them is via the Marker Pin facility (grab and move the pin to your area of interest ; maps that cover this area will appear on the right hand side ; the more you zoom in the more detailed these maps will become).
Gazetteers
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GEONet Names Server - Access the Board on Geographic Names gazetteers for countries around the world
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JewishGen's Shtetl Seeker - Search for towns in Central and Eastern Europe by placename or List all of the towns within a certain distance of a given latitude/longitude coordinates
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Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) - Contains entries for almost 2,000,000 geographic features in the USA. The site is maintained by the United States Board of Geographic Names and the US Geological Survey
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Place Name Servers on the Internet - An extensive set of links provided by Arizona State University. (Also lots of other useful links)
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SACO Excellent and comprehensive list of on-line gazetteers - Made available through the Library of Congress pogram for Cooperative Cataloging
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Some of the links on the Cambridge University Library Map Department website may also be useful
These pages were compiled by: April Carlucci (British Library Map Library); Tinho da Cruz (Department of Geography, University of Liverpool); Anne Taylor (Cambridge University Library). They are maintained by the Map Curators' Group of the BCS. Colleagues are requested to help keep this information current by e-mailing suggestions for inclusion, and details of links that don't work.
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The pages are intended to provide a first port of call for new colleagues, as well as a central place to find those documents or websites that you use infrequently but which are important/useful. Sadly, it cannot be an exhaustive list of every website that might be useful to the map curator/librarian/archivist - the maintenance would be a nightmare! We hope that you find it useful!
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The organisers wish to thank the Western Association of Map Libraries, whose original Map Librarians Toolbox was the inspiration for our UK version.