Overview of our Services

We provide many services to help Cornell students, faculty, researchers, and community members with their research needs. Map staff can provide in-depth research help to identify relevant material, locate a map of your area of interest, and we can assist in creating a digital copy of material from our print collection, among other services.

Need Help?.

Contact Us  Contact us icon, contains a phone and an open envelope with "at" symbol inside it

Walk-in, email, and phone based help is available. 

  1. Address: B-17 Olin Library
  2. Email: olinmaps@cornell.edu
  3. Phone: 607-255-7557

Map Help Desk Hours

Select the Map Room Hours link to view the most up to date hours.

  • Need to Access the map room outside regular business hours?.
  • Just email us so that we can arrange a time that works for you and our staff.

A Map of the basement level of Olin, our collection is in room B17, link to larger image.

A description of our Services

1. Reference and Instruction

Walk-In Service

Map Collection staff are available to answer your questions and to help you identify and locate pertinent materials. They can help you locate maps for your research or for classroom presentation, to verify citations, and to use a variety of digital mapping repositories.

Research Consultations

An appointment can be made when more extensive research assistance is desired than is available on a walk-in basis. Please use our online request form to schedule a 30-60 minute consultation. 

2. Circulation  

For instructional purposes, short-term loans of certain types of material may be permitted, but in general, maps, books, globes and CD-ROMs located in the Map Collection do not circulate. Circulation decisions are made by Map Collection staff on a case-by-case basis and are based on such criteria as fragility, age, and high demand. 

3. Interlibrary Loan

Copies of maps not owned by the Cornell Library can often be borrowed through Inter-Library Loan. Our staff can facilitate this by helping to verify references to cartographic materials and to locate libraries which hold particular maps.

4. Scanning/Digitization

1. There are two 12" X 18" Epson Expression 10000XL color flat-bed scanners in the Map Room. They are suitable for books and smaller maps and atlases and are available for self-service.
2. For larger maps and single-sheet materials we provide courtesy scanning on one of our 42" Colortrac SmartLF GX+42 scanners.

5. Micrographic Equipment Help

View our Library page to find out more about Olin's Micrographic collections and equipment.