Michelle,
These are great! I added linked for each town/city map page to my Union
county site, plus two general links on my Communities and Records pages.
---Robin
www.njuniongenweb.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michelle Chubenko" <michelle(a)chubenko.us>
To: <njgen(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 19, 2009 8:52 AM
Subject: [NJGEN] FW: Princeton's NJ Sanborn maps now online
-----Original Message-----
From: H-Net Network on New Jersey history
[mailto:H-NEW-JERSEY@H-NET.MSU.EDU] On Behalf Of h-nj(a)MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU
Sent: Friday, December 18, 2009 2:28 PM
To: H-NEW-JERSEY(a)H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: Princeton's NJ Sanborn maps now online
From: "John M. Delaney" <delaney(a)Princeton.EDU>
Date: Fri, December 18, 2009
A Major New Jersey Historical Resource Is Now Online
Princeton's project to organize, archivally house, catalog, and scan all
16,000 sheets of its historic collection of Sanborn Company fire
insurance maps of New Jersey has been completed. Accelerated last year
with a New Jersey Historical Commission grant, the work has been in
progress since 2003. Many deserve credit. Princeton students, part-time
during the academic months and full-time during the summers, have done a
major part of the housing and scanning work, particularly Heidi Lam '08,
Drew Dixon '09, Nate Bickford '09, and Laural Huchel '10. The Princeton
University Library digital studio, run by Roel Muñoz and his dedicated
staff (Erika Eggleston, Mary Marrero, Nicole Robinson, Joanna Tully),
contributed about half of the images. All of the MARC cataloging of the
sheets was done by Gail Smith, a senior bibliographic specialist in the
Department of Rare Books and Special Collection. Wangyal Shaw,
Princeton's GIS librarian, handled the loading and processing of the
digital files, and has recently implemented a new, simple-to-use,
high-resolution viewer for the images.
The starting point to the online maps is this Excel spreadsheet:
http://libweb.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/sanborn/sanborn-we
b.xls
Here, all the sheets are listed in alphabetical order by county, then by
town/city, then chronologically by date. Each town or city link leads to
a town/city website that lists each individual sheet, grouped by year.
Princeton, for example, has Sanborn sheets for 1885, 1890, 1905, 1902,
1906, 1911, 1918, 1927. Clicking on the individual sheet brings up its
high-resolution digital image. Copyright restrictions prevent us from
showing online images of post-1922 maps-but even those are listed on these
websites and can be viewed in person in our department's reading room in
Firestone Library. If the sheet or year is not represented, we don't have
it. A good way to get an idea of which sheet you need to see is to start
with an "overview" sheet, if one is provided in the list.
All the Sanborn records are also available by searching in Princeton
University Library's online catalog. There is one record for each
city/town/year. A url in that record will also bring you to the
town/city's website. One easy way is to browse the maps in a subject
search, using a phrase like "maps-new jersey".
My recommendation to NJ historical societies and other institutions with
anticipated high level interest in these maps: copy and paste the Excel
spreadsheet on your pc. That way you will have instant access to these
wonderful maps. We will be making small cosmetic changes to the town/city
websites in the future, but the links in the spreadsheet won't be
affected, nor those from the actual sheets. Feel free to make links to
the town/city websites as well.
For those of you New Jerseyans who have never looked at a Sanborn fire
insurance map: Do so now, for you've been missing out on a truly fabulous
resource for tracking the historic development of your own community! Your
own home or place of business may be on the map!
As a realist, I must expect that there will be issues/problems accessing
some of the maps some of the time-but I'm also hopeful that they will be
small and diminish over time!
Please spread the cheer!
- -
John Delaney, Curator
Historic Maps Collection
Princeton University Library
One Washington Road
Princeton, NJ 08544
phone: 609-258-6156
fax: 609-258-2324
-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
NJGEN-request(a)rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in
the subject and the body of the message