This is good stuff - a post I just received via the Overland Trails Discussion
List concerning railroad maps just beginning to be put on the WWW by the
Library of Congress.  More will follow they say. I tried it and its not hard
to use and the software is right on line with the maps.
 
Mike Polk
 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
 
Sender: Digital Libraries Research mailing list
>              <[log in to unmask]>
>From: Terry Kuny <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      [PROJECT] Library of Congress releases four new collections
>
>*******************************************************************
>The first release with more to follow -- Railroad Maps, 1828-1900
>http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/rrhtml/rrhome.html
>
>The maps presented are a selection from the Geography and Map Division
>holdings, based on the popular cartobibliography, Railroad maps of the
>United States: A Selective Annotated Bibliography of Original
>19th-century Maps in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of
>Congress. Additional railroad maps from this bibliography will be added
>throughout 1998. The digital images were created by staff in the
>Geography and Map Division by scanning the original map on a
>large-format (24 x 34 inches) flatbed scanner using RGB (red-
>green-blue) color separation. The TIFF files were compressed, using a
>wavelet-based image compressing software called Multi-Resolution
>Seamless Image Database, or MrSID. This software integrates multiple
>resolutions of an image in a single file which enables Internet users to
>zoom in, getting more and more detail.