University of Virginia Library

Section C. Geography.

For research material in geography the collection at the
Mariners' Museum near Newport News is outstanding among Virginia
libraries. This special library[17] contains 19,438 books and pamphlets,
which include bibliographical material, society publications,
treatises on maritime law, and historical works (chiefly
naval) of Europe, Asia, Oceanica, and the Americas. But the
collection is particularly strong in geographical subjects and in
naval science (see Technology, Section B., Military and Naval
Science[18] ). In geographical subjects there are, for example, the
works of the cartographers Arnoldus, Blaeu, Danckerts, Delisle,
Dewitt, Homann, Hondius, Janssonius, Linschoten, Lotter, Mercator,
Moll, Ortelius, Ptolemy, Sanson, Speed, and Vaugondy. There are
massive sets of collected voyages and travels such as the Histoire
Générale des Voyages, twenty-five volumes; Le Tour de Monde,
thirty-five volumes; and the collections of Balbi, Churchill,
Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, Hakluyt, Harris, Kemys, Mavor, Phillips,
Pinkerton, Prevost, and Purchas. American and English government
publications are well represented; and among the society publications
are the American Geographical Society Research Papers, the
Boletin de la Sociedad Geographica de Madrid, and the Journal and
the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society.

Several other libraries in the State contain map material
worthy of note. At the State Library the map collection, printed
and manuscript, comprises about 10,000 items, a considerable part
pertaining to Virginia and its divisions. Not a few of these items
are rare. At the Coast Artillery School there is also a large
collection of maps, the emphasis naturally being on material of
direct military import; but there are also complete files of geological
and geodetic and airways maps. A smaller collection at
the University of Virginia includes some early state maps and a
set of photographic reproductions of Virginia maps from the French
archives. Of localities represented in map collections in Virginia,
Williamsburg and the Yorktown peninsula are outstanding,
the collections of local maps at the College of William and Mary,
at Colonial Williamsburg, Incorporated, and at the Colonial
National Historical Park at Yorktown covering this area with
extraordinary completeness.

As for books on discovery, exploration, and travel, they show
a tendency to be nomadic in library classification: for copies of
the same work turn up under history in some libraries and under
geography in others. Here again, therefore, comparison of

collections merely by size is unsatisfactory. At the University
of Virginia the trend has apparently been to migrate to geography,
the census of the general book collection under that
subject showing 4,771 volumes when this survey was made. The
Barnard Shipp Collection and other donations have brought a considerable
number of the more important travel books and many
minor works to this library. There is some emphasis on early
American discovery and exploration; and of atlases, gazetteers,
and guide books the number is considerable.

Other noteworthy book collections on geographic subjects,
each totaling approximately 1,000 volumes, are at the library of
the University of Richmond, the library of Washington and Lee
University, and the State Library. Several of the public
libraries contain excellent collections of travel books, the
Petersburg Public Library deserving special recognition among
these.