The Library of Congress Geography and Map Reading Room has released a new website with detailed information about the Library's Sanborn Fire Insurance Map collection.  The site contains a searchable and browseable index of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps as well as detailed descriptions and explanations about important issues in using Sanborn maps such as: line style, map scales, publication dates, and abbreviations. There are also detailed explanations and illustrations of the various keys and legends used in Sanborn maps.

The Earth Sciences and Map Library has a large collection of Sanborn maps of California cities that available for use in both microfilm and digital formats. To access the digital Sanborn maps online, users must access the maps from a campus computer or via the library proxy server. 

Continuing with the Sanborn map theme, the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) has recently created an e-card option for California residents. Anyone who lives in California can register for an e-card that will allow users to access the SFPL's online databases, streaming audio and video, ebooks and audiobooks, and business databases for job seekers, among other resources.

Regarding maps, the SFPL e-card grants access to both the Sanborn map subscription and EBSCOHost's Magazines' image collection. The Sanborn maps for California number about 660,000 and are dated from between 1867-1970. The EBSCOHost Magazine image collection contains over 202,000 images, maps, and flags.

The SFPL's e-card expires after 4 years and is non-renewable. For long term access to the SFPL collection, e-card users can upgrade to a full access card for a fee. The SFPL provides a FAQ with further questions and answers.

The University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), as part of its Nevada in Maps collection, has made Sanborn maps of 29 Nevada towns available online for free. The dates of the maps range from 1879 through 1923. From the site: "Nevada's early western settlement history was one of tenuous existence. Settlements, hardly towns much less cities, came and went usually as mining sites were exploited and declined. Few maps exist to document the existence and changes to these towns . . . This project is an effort to present online a full-color set of Nevada Sanborn® and other Nevada town maps. There is no full set in any format available at any location in the state."

The site also features a very useful set of links that include information about Sanborn maps, information about the UNR map project, an inventory of various formats of Nevada town maps online, and a site that details the coordination between Sanborn maps and historic photographs of specific buildings in Nevada.

The Earth Sciences and Map Library has created a new series of updated index maps for its holdings of Sanborn fire insurance maps. The first maps in the series will cover Bay Area cities including Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco.

Some of the index maps currently used to determine volume numbers in the Earth Sciences and Map Library collection have seen better days. Many of them are third- and fourth-generation photocopies of not-to-scale maps. These have proven difficult for patrons to use in determining coverage for their areas of interest and have caused needless hours of extra work and searching.

Library staff members John Ridener and Zach Veley created the new maps from the old indexes found in Sanborn volumes. The maps were created using ArcGIS with data files for local roads and state highways provided by the California Environmental Information Clearinghouse. The volume boundaries were crosschecked with the online Sanborn maps, creating the historic boundaries of the Sanborn volumes over a contemporary map.

Hopefully this index series will prove useful in locating contemporary sites on historic maps.

Are you looking for detailed maps of an area with elevation data? Working on an architecture or urban planning project and need elevation data on a map for a specific location or area in a city? Do you wish Sanborn maps had topographic contours?

Many topographic maps, such as 7.5 minute quadrangles published by the USGS, are large scale, for example, 1:24,000, and have contour intervals of 40 feet. This level of map information is good for physical geography of areas but can pose problems if you're looking for a finer level of detail, especially in terms of elevation change and contours in urban areas.

Aside from conducting a survey yourself, there are a few options for larger scale maps with detailed elevation information. While some of the suggestions below show elevation information using spot heights rather than contours, these maps are some examples of large scale maps with detailed elevation information:

A topographical & complete map of San Francisco
Call number: G4364.S5 1853.E3 Case D

Topographic map of Market St. res. tract [San Francisco]
Call number: G4364.S5G46 1913.K7 Case D

Atlas of the city of Yonkers, Westchester County, New York
Online

California 7.5-minute USGS quadrangle digital elevation models (DEMs)
Online

Grade map, San Francisco, Calif.
Call number: G4364.S5 s1 .S3 Case D

R-5 height limit study : [Berkeley, Calif.]
Call number: MICROFICHE 2015

Contour map of the City of Berkeley, Alameda County, California
Call number: G4364.B5 1952 .C6 Case B

Often these large scale maps in urban areas are real estate maps and can be found by searching "real property [place] maps" as a subject search in Pathfinder or Melvyl.