Library Research Guides: WRIT 161: Hidden Worlds: Find Travel Guides

Travel Guides

Explore the following sources to locate travel guides. If you can't find one on your homeplace, that's okay! Look at others for inspiration on writing style, format, and design. Check out the search strategies page for tips on how to refine your searches.

Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History This link opens in a new window
Women's diaries, correspondence, photographs, etc. from global travels in the early 1800s to late 1900s. Topics covered include: architecture, art, British Empire, climate, exploration, family life, housing, language, monuments, natural history, politics and diplomacy, race, religion, science, shopping, and war.
Leisure, Travel & Mass Culture: The History of Tourism This link opens in a new window
Guidebooks and brochures, periodicals, travel agency correspondence, photographs and personal travel journals explore the expansion, accessibility and affordability of British and American working class tourism c.1850 to 1980, touching on every continent on the globe.
Medieval Travel Writing This link opens in a new window
Manuscripts of European travel writing (in fact and fantasy) from the 13th to 16th centuries, focusing on the Holy Land, central Asia and the Far East. Original document languages include French, Latin, German, Spanish, Dutch and English.
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) This link opens in a new window
Search the contents of archives and manuscript repositories throughout the U.S.

Public Libraries

Public libraries often have local history sections, which can include guides to a specific location. If you can't visit in person, explore their online resources and reach out to one of their librarians for help.

Online Map Collections

David Rumsey Map Collection
The David Rumsey Map Collection was started over 30 years ago and contains more than 150,000 maps. The collection focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, wall maps, globes, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children's, and manuscript maps. Items range in date from about 1550 to the present.
NPL Maps & Atlases
The New York Public Library's collection of maps and atlases, organized by catefory.
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
The University of Texas at Austin's map collection.
The British Library
The British Library collection of maps, plans and views is one of the largest in the world, numbering some 4.5 million. They have one of the largest collections of maps, plans and topographical views in the world, numbering some 4.5 million, with a chronological spread of over 2,000 years.
Yale University Map Collection
The Beinecke Library has digitized more than 20,000 maps, which are available in the Beinecke’s Digital Library at http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/. For more information about this digitization project see the earlier announcement: http://web.library.yale.edu/news/2015/06/transfer-pre-1900-map-collection-beinecke-library