The National Library of the Netherlands has an online version of Ortelius’s 16th-century atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. In Dutch only. (From what I understand it’s not the only digitization of this work available online: see the atlas’s Wikipedia page for links to additional sites.) [Maps Mania]

An exhibition celebrating Welsh author and cartographer Humphrey Llwyd (1527-1568) is taking place at the National Library of Wales: BBC News, press release. Among other things, Llwyd produced the first published map of Wales (rather than as a part of another map), the Cambriae Typus, which appeared as an addendum to Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in 1573. The exhibition runs until the 31st at the Library in Aberystwyth; admission is free. The Library’s digital version of the map is available here.

On this day in 1570, says Google, Abraham Ortelius published the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. As a result he’s the subject of one of today’s Google Doodles. Google, of course, has some small interest in maps. [Nathaniel Kelso]

A catalogue of the correspondence of Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598), the Flemish cartographer responsible for the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, is now available. Ortelius’ letters are scattered about the world in various collections; the catalogue is just that, a catalogue, not a digital archive—where digital copies do exist there are links to them, but otherwise in-person library research is still required. (The principal researcher, Joost Depuydt, recently published an article on Ortelius’ correspondence in Imago Mundi.) [via]