The faculty's map library was founded in 1908 and has since then grown to a collection which consists of 130,000 single maps and 4.000 atlases. The main task of the map collection is to support the faculty's teaching and research activities. The library also serves as a general reference. People all over the country come with map related questions.
Most acquisitions are recently-published and are concerned with the Netherlands.
Early cartographical material is mainly represented by facsimiles. The emphasis in the collection is then layed on maps made by the Dutch or maps that are related to the Netherlands and its former colonies. The collection possesses about 5000 maps produced before 1850, containing some rare old maps. New is the acquisition of cartographical software and the possibility for clients to work with it on a pentium computer. A list of the software products is given below.