Ever heard of Sanborn Maps? Sanborn fire insurance maps are large scale historical city maps, detailed at the block and building level, that show residential, commercial, and industrial uses of sites, building footprints, potential environmental hazards, and construction details of structures. Sanborn fire insurance maps were originally designed to assist fire insurance agents in determining the potential damage from fires, assessing risk, and setting premiums. Today, Sanborn maps are used for a variety of purposes, including environmental site assessment, architecture, urban history, and genealogy.
Building Colorado Story by Story: The Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Collection is a digital collection of Sanborn fire insurance maps of cities across Colorado. The collection contains 346 maps of 79 principal cities in 52 counties covering the years 1883-1922. The University of Colorado at Boulder is the in the process of digitizing these maps and the beta version is now available online.
CLiC andthe Map Library staff at CUB are running workshops about these Sanborn maps and map librarianship in general. Many people have attended the short overview sessions at our CLiC Spring Workshops. Also check out the last Accidental Map Librarian Workshop in Gunnison May 11.
We have also created a wiki for our Accidental Map Librarian Workshops you can check out at : http://maplibraries.pbwiki.com/
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