Atlases & Maps  Tags: atlas atlases map maps census mashups citation citing history historical education world united_states sanborn cartographic cartography google_maps geography  

An atlas is a collection of maps or charts, usually bound together.

What would you use an Atlas for?

• Find locations, the connections between them and the relative size or significance of the places designated.
• Find specific subject information such as geology, climate, history, population, regions, resources and other characteristics of a geographic area.
• Find information on a whole range of a particular nation's features: physical, historical, economic, social, cultural and administrative.

The name derives from a custom—initiated by Gerardus Mercator in the 16th century—of using the figure of the Titan Atlas, holding the globe on his shoulders, as a frontispiece for books of maps.

In addition to maps and charts; Alases often contain pictures, tabular data, facts about areas, and indexes of place-names keyed to coordinates of latitude and longitude or to a locational grid with numbers and letters along the sides of maps.

"atlas." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 15 May 2009 <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9010110>.