Many atlases are large, oversized books that can not be shelved on the regular Reference shelves without damaging them. These larger atlases can be found in the atlas stand. This collection is not necessarily the best of the atlases we have available nor the most popular ones, though these stands allow you to find the atlases more easily and allow the books to last longer. At some point almost everyone has had to look at a map.
Maps represent our three dimensional world in two dimensions.
They accomplish this through the use of color, symbols, and scale. Scale is a ratio of the actual distance of one object to another compared to the distance that is drawn for those two objects on a map. Color may be used to show the boundaries of a country or varying values of a descriptor. For instance, a mountain may be one shade of color and the land that is below sea level may be depicted as another color. Symbols may be used to represent a highway, a bridge, or a river.