Sun Devil community

This holiday season, the gift of wrapping paper

The ASU Library Map and Geospatial Hub has an abundance of old, free maps — perfect for creative and sustainable wrapping paper

director of Map and Geospatial Hub standing in front of old maps

Matthew Toro, director of the ASU Library Map and Geospatial Hub, invites the ASU community to take home excess maps waiting to be recycled to use as gift wrap or art material.

By Britt Lewis |
December 12, 2018

‘Tis the season … for gift wrap.

For all those white elephants and special someones on your list this holiday season, the ASU Library Map and Geospatial Hub has you (ahem) covered.

The library unit, located on the third floor of Noble Library on the Tempe campus, has an abundance of old maps that have outlived their original purpose.

Both unique and sustainable, the recycled maps make for creative, high-quality wrapping paper. (Some of them have even become art.)

And the price is jolly good. The maps are free.

“They’re primarily topographic maps whose coverage is outside the geographic and/or thematic foci of our collection development policy,” said Matthew Toro, director of the Map and Geospatial Hub. “Others are duplicated, superseded, or available online in multiple digital image formats.”

The ASU community is invited to come by the Map and Geospatial Hub during normal business hours to check out what's inside the "Take a Map" box for their gift-wrapping needs.

(Scotch tape not included.)