In terms of its being a great database of information, one of the internet's most glaring shortcomings is the complete dearth of maps available online. Granted, you can get pretty good street maps on mapquest, and streetmap.co.uk, but general physical and political country maps are very few, and very hard to find.
When searching for a map of northern Italy, for example, I either get listings of wall maps I'm supposed to pay for, or really lousy maps. The only decent repository I've managed to locate is the fabulous Perry-Castaņeda Library at the University of Texas.
But even this well organized collection is fairly limited. I wonder if there will ever be a more complete collection. If so, I fear it won't be free.
