The US Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington, D.C., USA has custody of the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world with collections numbering over 4.5 million maps including 60,000 atlases, 6,000 reference works, numerous globes and plastic relief models, and a large number of cartographic material in other formats, including electronic.

These cartographic materials date from fourteenth century portolan charts through recent geographic information systems data sets.