What is included/excluded
This is a listing of several hundred free web sources whose text is substantial or original enough to be worth a visit, arranged under convenient sub-headings. Brief, superficial, speculative and politically-motivated texts have been ignored. So too have book reviews, but see a searchable list of all book reviews posted to the several HNET discussion lists. The works listed on 'Web Articles' range from fully footnoted, scholarly texts, to general summaries; and from interpretative works to map bibliographies. Some are dual (print and web) publications, but many are unpublished and accessible only via the web. Academic papers in PDF or PostScript format are usually not indexed by search engines and have (generally) not been included here.

Exhibitions
Online exhibitions have been systematically included since October 2000, providing they include sufficient commentary. They are prefixed with +, which allows them to be searched for. Exhibitions with little or no text will usually be included on the Map Images pages.

Printed sources
While the number of web texts is growing steadily, most of the best work will still be found in a printed source, such as Imago Mundi: the International Journal for the History of Cartography, in other published journals, or in works listed under Reading Suggestions.

e-journals (cartographic)
MapForum appeared as a free e-journal until Issue 15 [2002]. There was no cumulative contents listing. However, its substantial articles have been included in this listing, and the 'Atlas Collations' come mostly from that source. In 2004, Map Forum became a print journal.

The bi-monthly magazine Mercator's World provided a selection of its articles on the web. When it ceased publication the website disappeared. However, the site has been archived by the Wayback Machine. The entire run of the web-mounted articles (1996-2003) can therefore still be retrieved, mostly from these Web Articles pages, although the illustrations are not included.

e-journal sites (in general)
Only freely accessible sites have been listed. Those from Project Muse and JSTOR (an archive of digitised back issues of selected journals, available on subscription) have not been included. Increasingly, print journals offer online access via subscribing libraries. Such articles are not listed here, although their various online sources may be found via a search engine.

It can be worth while to go to Find Articles (part of the BNET Business Library), search for a title, and perhaps be offered one or more free versions of it.

Library of Congress site
Several of the links are to the excellent Library of Congress 'American Memory' site, whose map links can be accessed via "Map Collections: 1544-[present]".

Map images
For pictures of maps see Web Images. For lists of links, etc, see also Special topics with relevance to early maps and Related subjects.

Feedback
This is the first attempt at a bibliography of free web texts for the history of cartography. Most of the material has been found via general keyword searches using English terms (for example 'early mapping') since it would be a huge task to search individually for hundreds of personal and geographical names, and in various languages.

Many valuable sites must remain undocumented. When you find these, please notify the editor:

Tony Campbell