The DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room, located on the rst floor in Room 108, another section of the GRD, houses approximately 1o,ooo general interest and humanities periodicals in 22 languages from 128 countries. The Map Division is the largest public library collection of its kind in the United States, with more than 416,000 maps and 15,000 atlases. The variety of the collection is reflected in its steady use by travelers, banks and corporations, geologists and economists, real estate interests, publishers, and consultants. The founder of Pan American Airways, Juan Trippe, in effect discovered Wake Island while poring over maps of the Paci c for possible refueling stops. Writers and news media require especially ef cient map service for international events such as the 1982 war in the Falklands between Argentina and Great Britain.
Genealogists research the location of obscure European and American villages.
Historians of urban design examine collections of worldwide city plans. The collection includes histories of towns, cities, and counties in the United States. Holdings also include family histories, periodicals, books relating to the topic of heraldry, flags, and the derivation of names, as well as guides to obtaining census information and vital statistics. A large collection of ephemeral materials on localities in the United States and on local elections is housed in the division, as is a unique collection of material yielding information on such topics as ethnic genealogy, adoptions, orphans, missing persons, and heraldry. Pictorial views are available from all parts of the country and take the form of micro che, scrapbook material, photographs, prints, and postcards.