The other day I read in the Boston Globe that Philanthropist/Map Collector Norman Leventhal had donated $10 million to the Boston Public Library and loaned them 178 of his best maps. So today I had a few free minutes and took a look at the Boston Public Library Norman B. Leventhal Map Center's website. I can honestly say that I have officially found the coolest online historical resource ever! check it out.
Essentially, you can scan thousands of historical maps in the online collection and you can sort them by location, subject, date, publisher, author, and mercator. The site allows you to zoom in on the maps and the quality is superb. There are 93 maps of Boston alone and there is even a map of my hometown, Andover, from 1882. The online is pretty heavy on New England maps so this resource is great if you are from the Boston area.
It's amazing to step back for a moment and compare this type of resource to Flash Earth and think about how far we as humans have come in recognizing where we are, literally, in the world. How have our perceptions of self/neighbor/unknown changed as we have been given greater access to maps and knowledge of our surroundings? The affect that the maps in this collection have likely had on societies and perception is unknown, but I am certain that it is definitely one of the cooler things I've stumbled across online is a long, long, long time.
Cheers to you, Norman Leventhal. You rock.