The Library of Congress houses one of the world's largest and most diverse collections of Polish cartographic materials. The Geography and Map Division has custody of 2,750-3,000 single maps filed as Polish. A precise shelf count of all single and serial maps relating to Poland would be an impractical undertaking and would yield ambiguous results. Partitioned by its powerful neighbors, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, Poland literally disappeared from the map as an independent state in 1795, not to reemerge until the end of World War I. And within three decades, its borders were redrawn and shifted some 100 miles to the west. Consequently, many of the maps covering the territory of present- day Poland are filed with materials from Germany/Prussia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Russian Empire. The Division's extensive collection of topographic series maps embraces the entire territory of interwar Poland on a scale of 1:100,000. Much of the cartographic work completed by the Germans was reissued (with place name changes) by the Polish Military Geographic Institute. The Division also offers 1:25,000 topographic maps covering about one-third of present-day Poland. A rich collection of more than 200 Polish atlases also is available.

The Polish single and series maps collections contain regional, national, provincial, county, and city maps--some so detailed as to indicate individual buildings and houses. The collections offer splendid examples of every cartographic genre--annotated road maps, maps of inland waterways, mineral deposits, historic sites, battlefields, ethnic and linguistic groups, forests, precipitation.

Two particularly handsome examples of uncataloged single maps, executed by the prominent 17th century cartographers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Johann Baptist Homann and Frederick de Wit are filed simply as: Homanno, I. B. "Poland 17-- ?" and de Wit, F. "Poland and Silesia, 1649?"

Among noteworthy specimens of the cartographic art those listed below which link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.