Resources by format
Here are listed guides for finding materials based on their formats.
- index
- Articles
- Audio books
- Biographies
- Book reviews
- Business, company, and industry information
- Center for Research Libraries collections
- Citation and style manuals
- Databases
- Demographic visualizations
- Ebooks
- Engineering standards
- Foreign language learning materials
- Journals
- Manuscripts
- Maps
- Movie reviews and criticisms
- Movies
- Patents and trademarks
- Popular Reading
- Primary source databases
- Reserves
- Speeches and transcripts
- Streaming videos
- Test and measures
- Textbooks
- Theses and dissertations
- Tutorial and educational resources
The library still maintains a collection of physical maps, though most are located in remote storage and must be requested to be brought back for use. Special Collections holds many historical maps. The largest component of our physical collection was USGS topo maps; these can now be accessed through the USGS database below; plotter printouts can be requested through our Geospatial Data Services.
Current maps
- CIA World Fact BookThe World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 266 world entities. The Reference tab includes: maps of the major world regions, as well as flags of the world, a physical map of the world, a political map of the world, and a standard time zones of the world map.
- Country Profiles and Mapping Information SystemCountry Profiles and Mapping Information System provides country-level reports and statistical data in FAO "fields of expertise" (namely sustainable development, economic situation, agriculture/ forestry/ fishery sectors, technical cooperation) and "priority areas" (biodiversity, biosecurity, biotechnology, climate change, ecosystem management, emergency operations, ethics, food for cities, gender, global studies, information management, integrated production systems, organic farming, spatial information, sustainable livelihoods, trade agreements).
- GeoRef from ProQuestGeoRef indexes citations and abstracts from journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports and theses in the geological sciences. It also includes references to all publications of the U.S. Geological Survey. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1669-present (North America coverage); 1933-present (Worldwide coverage).The GeoRef database includes references to all publications of the U.S. Geological Survey. Masters' theses and doctoral dissertations from US and Canadian universities are also covered.
To maintain the database, GeoRef editor/indexers regularly scan more than 3,500 journals in 40 languages as well as new books, maps, and reports. They record the bibliographic data for each document and assign index terms to describe it. Each month between 4,000 and 7,000 new references are added to the database.
ProQuest Deep Indexing: Earth Sciences supplements GeoRef with access to deep indexing for tables, figures, graphs, charts and other illustrations from the scholarly research and technical literature for selected records. Records from the database appear with searches of GeoRef to provide an additional path for discovery. - MasterFILE Premier from EBSCOhostMasterFILE Premier contains full text for nearly 1,700 periodicals covering general reference, business, health, education, general science, multicultural issues and much more. This database also contains full text for nearly 500 reference books and over 164,400 primary source documents, as well as an Image Collection of over 502,000 photos, maps & flags. MasterFILE Premier offers PDF backfiles (as far back as 1975) for key publications including American Libraries, Foreign Affairs, History Today, Judaism, Library Journal, National Review, Saturday Evening Post, etc.
- National Map from the USGSThe National Geologic Map Database (NGMDB) is a collection of maps, reports, and stratigraphic information about the United States' geology. The NGMBD is a partnership between the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Association of American State Geologists (AASG).
- USGS National Geologic Map DatabaseUSGS National Geologic Map Database provides maps and related data about: geology, hazards, earth resources, geophysics, geochemistry, geochronology, paleontology, and marine geology.
Historical maps
- America's Historical Imprints from ReadexAmerica's Historical Imprints is a digital collection containing virtually every book, pamphlet, and broadside published in America over a 200-year period. It is comprised of a vast range of publications, including advertisements, almanacs, bibles, broadsides, catalogs, charters and by-laws, contracts, cookbooks, elegies, eulogies, laws, maps, narratives, novels, operas, pamphlets, plays, poems, primers, sermons, songs, speeches, textbooks, tracts, travelogues, treaties, and more. Scanned pages available as JPEG, TIFF, and PDF.Also known as Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 and Series II, Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819. Contains virtually every known book, pamphlet and broadside published in America between 1640 and the first two decades of the 19th century—more than 75,000 printed items in all. Based on renowned bibliographies by Charles Evans and Roger Bristol and by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker.
- Library of Congress Digitized CollectionsThe Library of Congress's digitized American historical materials are organized into more than 100 thematic collections. Original formats include manuscripts, prints, photographs, posters, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, and sheet music. Collections may be browsed individually, searched individually (including full-text searching for many written items), or searched across multiple collections. 1400s-present.The original formats include manuscripts, prints, photographs, posters, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, and sheet music. Each online collection is accompanied by a set of explanatory features designed to make the materials easy to find, use, and understand. Collections may be browsed individually, searched individually (including full-text searching for many written items), or searched across multiple collections.
- Ancestry Library EditionAncestry Library Edition is an academic version of ancestry.com. Contains coverage of the U.S. and the U.K., including census, vital, church, court, and immigration records, as well as record collections from Canada and other areas. A collection of more than 4,000 databases and 1.5 billion names including U.S. federal census images and indexes from 1790 to 1940; the Map Center containing more than 1,000 historical maps; American Genealogical Biographical Index (over 200 volumes), Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage (over 150 volumes), The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1630, Social Security Death Index, WWI Draft Registration Cards, Federal Slave Narratives, and a Civil War collection.Answers await everyone—whether professional or hobbyist, expert or novice, genealogist or historian—inside the more than 7,000 available databases. Here, you can unlock the story of you with sources like censuses, vital records, immigration records, family histories, military records, court and legal documents, directories, photos, maps, and more.
- Primary Sources from GaleGale Primary Sources indexes citations and full text from Gale's Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century digitized collection, The Sabin collection, and Smithsonian collections, including books, manuscripts, newspapers, maps, and early photographs.
- FIMo Fire Insurance Maps OnlineLarge-scale maps of towns and cities in Virginia and Washington, D.C., useful to urban specialists, social historians, architects, geographers, genealogists, local historians, planners, and environmentalists. Data contained includes the outline of each building; size, shape, and construction materials; functions of structures; locations of windows and doors; street names, street and sidewalk widths, property boundaries, and house and block numbers.
- Documenting the American South (DocSouth)A digital publishing initiative that provides online access to primary sources such as texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes fourteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, maps, literary works, oral history interviews, and songs. 1500s-present.Documenting the American South (DocSouth) includes fourteen thematic collections of primary sources for the study of southern history, literature, and culture.
The texts, images, and other materials come primarily from the premier Southern collections in the libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These original Southern materials can be found in several library locations, including the Southern Historical Collection, one of the largest collections of Southern manuscripts in the country; the North Carolina Collection, the most complete printed documentation of a single state anywhere; the Rare Book Collection, which holds an extensive Southern pamphlet collection; and Davis Library, which offers rich holdings of printed materials on the Southeast. - History of Science, Technology & Medicine from EBSCOhostThe History of Science, Technology, and Medicine database indexes citations and abstracts of journal articles, conference proceedings, books, dissertations, maps, and other materials on the history of science, medicine, and technology. 1600s-present.
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online from GaleNCCO indexes the full text of books, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, maps, diaries, photographs, statistics, literature, government reports, treaties, and other kinds of documents in both Western and non-Western languages as HTML and PDF, plus some image formats. Subject areas include British politics and society, religion, education, international relations, economics, and English, French, and German literature. 1789-1914.
- ProQuest CongressionalThe ProQuest Congressional Research Digital Collection provides access to the Reports of the Legislative Reference Service (LRS) and Congressional Research Service (CRS) from 1916-present, and Congressional committee prints from 1830-present. it includes bills, laws, and legislative histories; Congressional hearings; Testimony; The Congressional Record; and maps.
- Virginia Memory from the Library of VirginiaVirginia Memory provides digitized collections of print materials, manuscripts, archival records, newspapers, photographs and ephemera, maps and atlases, rare books, and fine art.The four primary components of Virginia Memory at launch in 2009 are as follows:
Digital Collections provides access to our traditional digital image collections available through our online catalog; our digital asset management tool, DigiTool; and partnership programs with the Library of Congress (Chronicling America) and the Internet Archive (Archive-It). We will highlight an older collection as a "Featured Collection," as well as newly created digital collections in "What's New?" on a regular basis.
Reading Room is where we post our newest type of digital content. Currently, we have three offerings, all of which are researched and written by Library staff.
This Day in Virginia History offers a document, image, or sound file with contextual information for each day of the year.
Virginia Chronology offers over 650 different events—42 of which have related digital images—that have occurred over the more than 400 years that have shaped the history of the commonwealth.
Virginiana presents articles written by Library archivists as they discover collections of interest during processing.
Exhibitions have been offered online for several years as virtual versions of physical installations at the Library of Virginia. All users, including educators and students, will find much of interest in this area. Exhibitions are also organized by topic.
Online Classroom is directed at students and educators with tips on incorporating primary source materials from our collections into the classroom. Lesson plans are correlated to the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL).
Agricultural maps
- ASFA: Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts from ProQuestASFA: Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstract indexes citations and abstracts of all aspects of aquatic resources, including life sciences, economics, and social science/public policy aspects. Sources include journals, books, conference papers, reports, patents, dissertations, and maps. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1971-present.
- Crop Protection CompendiumUp-to-date information on 10,000 pests, diseases, weeds and natural enemy species worldwide. Over 2,360 complete datasheets, provided by over 1,100 specialists. Data for over 200 different crops and over 150 countries, with global and regional distribution maps. Over 8000 images allowing for easy identification of crop pests. Background information on 10,000 pests, diseases, weeds and natural enemy species providing a complete archive. Some documents are available in full text as HTML and PDF.
- Forestry Compendium OnlineForest Compendium contains full-text journal and conference articles, datasheets, maps, and images on all aspects of forestry, including trees, pests, botanical features, and uses. 1980s-present.
- Invasive Species Compendium from CABIInvasive Species Compedium provides datasheets, authored by experts and peer reviewed, with fully referenced sections on taxonomy and nomenclature, distribution, habitat, identification, biology and ecology, species associations, pathways for introduction, impacts and management, complemented by images and maps, and supported by abstracts and full text articles. This Compendium covers invasive species threatening livelihoods and the environment worldwide.
- Last Updated: Nov 20, 2024 12:14 PM
- URL: https://guides.lib.vt.edu/find/byformat
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