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Nautical Charts: How to find

Go to UO MAP Library Nautical Chart Homepage

Accessing Nautical Charts

The MAP Library's nautical chart collections are arranged by chart number. To locate charts for a particular place, do the following:

1. Search for a place either by through locator maps, or by searching for a chart title using one or more of these resources:

Online resources:

~ Scroll through, or use your browser's Find function (ctrl f in Internet Explorer) to do a keyword search of our indexes to the Current, Superseded, and Historic nautical chart collections.

~For titles and numbers of charts of US waters, use the search function of NOAA's Print-On-Demand partner, OceanGrafix. At their site you may search by chart number or by region.

~Another graphic interface to chart names and numbers of US waters is NOAA's Electronic Navigational Chart (ENC) Chart Downloader. Read the disclaimer, click the "Proceed" button, then choose either raster, vector, or the Graphical Catalog. This tool also allows you to download the charts as GIS data or other digital formats.

~Another source of online charts is NOAA's Historical Map and Chart Project.

~ The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Digital Nautical Chart has an interface to look up the chart number of any nautical chart worldwide by region.

Print Resource:

~ Come to the Map Collection and ask to use the Catalog of Maps, Charts, and Related Products found in the Map Librarian's office (a.k.a. the big white nautical chart book). Further instructions are found inside the front cover. It is somewhat out-of-date and is no longer being kept current.

2. Then, to see if the chart number (or name) you are interested in is found in the U of O Map Collection, refer to the lists of Current, Superseded Series', and Historic Charts.

3. If we have the chart, come to the Documents Center in Knight Library and ask for assistance. Please bring the chart number and chart title with you. Charts are housed in map tubs.

A table to help convert out-of-date (pre-July 1, 1974) chart numbers to current chart numbers is available at http://library.stanford.edu/depts/branner/collections/nautical_old.html

MAP Library Nautical Chart Collection

Maintained by: map librarian, map@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 03/28/2011