Map Department
Our strengths
The Map Department of the Zurich Central Library serves as a centre of excellence for new and old topographic maps of good quality. These maps document a long period of time, as maps have been collected since the early days of the modern era. As far as the spatial resolution is concerned, new and old maps are collected up to a scale of 1:25,000 for Europe and up to a scale of 1:50,000 for the rest of the world. Maps of cities everywhere in the world are also acquired.
Examples of use
• Spatial planners at universities or in the commercial sector can study topographic features everywhere in the world.
• As maps published in different years can be compared to one another, conclusions can be drawn about urban and rural development trends.
• Are you planning a trip to or a project in a remote part of the world? It is sometimes impossible to find good maps of some regions on the market or on the internet. The Zurich Central Library, however, has access to suppliers who can provide maps that are difficult to find.
• If you need to research a cartographical issue or a historical map in our reference library, you can count on our help:
Just ask!
You can contact us in person, by telephone or by e-mail for answers to your questions about maps or the history of maps. Often research done in this way is more successful: many foreign map materials have not yet been integrated in the online library catalogue, or our map librarians are the only people that can find them.