Maps and Atlases: Print Maps in the Scott Library Map Collection

The Map Collection houses a variety of materials, including 112,000 print. The collection focuses on southern Ontario and Toronto, but there are many resources for Canada and the United States, as well as the rest of the world. 

Since 1990 all new maps are catalogued and can be searched in York’s Online Library Catalogue. In addition, maps of Canada (as a whole), the Atlantic Provinces, Ontario (as a whole), and Toronto have been catalogued and can be searched in OMNI  We suggest using OMNI Advanced Search to find maps in our collection.  

1. Search for York Libraries. 
2. Add you author, keywords, title or subject terms to your search.  If you want to search for a specific geographic area, search by subject. 
3. Select your resource type as Map.  You may want limit your search by language or by date
4. Click on Search.
5. You will get a list of your results. To limit your search to print maps in our collection, select YorkU Location as Scott Maps. 
6. If you want to select online maps only, select Availability as Available Online

For maps not listed in the OMNI, we suggest you use the Map Library Holdings List. The holdings list is a complete listing of the Map Library sheet map collection. This listing is arranged by call number and includes the scale, title, publisher, date of publication and the number of copies for each item in the collection. Consult our Holdings List page for more information on how to access and use the holdings list. 

Map and Air Photo Indexes are used to help you locate a specific map or airphoto in a series.  

Map indexes are located in the following locations at the Map Library:

• Thematic map series indexes are filed at the beginning of each map series, please consult the Map Holdings list for the location of these map series
• Canadian National Topographic Map Series Indexes - On top of the first bank of map cabinets
• Airphoto indexes are located online and are also filed with our airphotos
• International topographic maps - our inventory below provides links to online indexes and information on the location of each map series:
  • Caribbean
  • World & the Americas
  • Asia, Africa & Oceania
  • Europe

Our map collection is organized by geographical areas. Each map in our collection has a call number. Every map drawer has a label indicating the geographical area and the call number range for the drawer.  Call numbers for maps are arranged by geographic area, sub-location and/or subject, scale and date.

Example #1 of a map call number - G 5141 P2 50 1989

Example #2 of a map call number - G 3484 M6 A4 100 1988