About Maps at the Tennessee State Library and Archives

Maps are invaluable components of historical and genealogical research, and documentary records often cannot be fully understood without referring to maps. The Library & Archives has the largest and most significant collection of historical maps in the state available for public use. We hope to increase utilization of this tremendous research resource by digitizing original manuscript maps and making them available in our Tennessee Virtual Archive (TeVA). These digitized maps appear in the JPEG2000 format, which means that you may view them in greater detail by using the Zoom tool and Expanded View option to navigate to a particular area of the image. We will continue to add maps to this digital online collection to bring more of them to a wider public.

Anyone looking for other maps (those not yet scanned) should consult the thousands of database entries in the online collection, and talk with an archivist. If you open or "Browse the Collection," you will see records for our scanned maps followed by a great many non-image (or metadata-only) records. If you use the "Search" bar to narrow your results, those results will display scanned and non-image map records mixed together. The non-image entires will provide certain information about particular maps: Title, Description, Dimensions, and Location - where the map can be found in our collections. Armed with that information, users can consult with a Public Services archivist about access to that particular map. Many important maps are part of individual manuscript collections and record groups and are not yet digitized.

Read more about the Civil War Maps and Historical Maps.

For additional assistance, please consult the Manuscripts staff.