Today’s New York Times has a feature about the New York Public Library’s $5-million renovation of its map room, which reopens Thursday as the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division. The map room touts itself as the public library with the largest collection of maps (nearly 420,000 of them) and, despite recent concerns about map thefts, the maps, some of which date back to the sixteenth century, are accessible to the public. Thanks to Joel for the link.