Using the digital collections
The Leventhal Map & Education Center has one of the most significant digital collections of any North American map library. We encourage all kinds of research and exploration into our collections through digital access, and seek to make digital material available on the most permissive licenses possible.
This early twentieth century map of the libraries of Massachusetts celebrated the statewide circulation of nine million volumes of library material.
Digital repositories
Our materials are mainly available on two online repositories, both of which are free to access without registration.
- Digital Collections portal. Nearly 10,000 objects, primarily flat maps but also including some bound atlases, ephemera, and series, are available on our Digital Collections portal. The Digital Collections portal features an advanced search for filtering material by date and theme, as well as many maps that have been georeferenced for display on top of a modern map layer. Go to the Digital Collections portal
- Internet Archive. Over 300 atlases and books, consisting of bound format, non-oversize materials, are scanned and uploaded to the Internet Archive. Go to the Internet Archive collection
Other digital discovery tools
- Atlascope. The Atlascope project involves the digital transformation of over a hundred fire insurance and real estate atlases of Boston and its inner suburbs, showing detail down to the parcel and building level for a period from 1860–1940. Go to the Atlascope web app
- Digital Commonwealth. Our Digital Collections portal is part of Digital Commonwealth, a consortium of more than 180 cultural heritage organizations across Massachusetts. From the Digital Commonwealth repository, you can search Map Center collections together with maps, images, texts, sound records, and millions of other objects from other institutions. Go to the Digital Commonwealth portal
- Flickr. Before the development of our Digital Collections portal, we uploaded full-resolution images to the photo-sharing site Flickr. You can browser our images here. We are no longer actively adding new material to our Flickr collections.
Searching the digital collections
Advanced access to digital objects
IIIF Manifests and Images
All objects in the Digital Collections portal are available for access through the International Image Interoperability Format (IIIF). To access the IIIF Manifest for an object, add the suffix /manifest.json to the end of the collections.leventhalmap.org URL. For example, the Manifest of the Bonner map of Boston can be found here.
Search API
JSON search results of the Digital Collections portal are available at the endpoint https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search.json, which takes the same query parameters as the search portal. For example, a search returning results for the keyword “Boston neck” can be found here.