I am making a map thats the world 1914. Being new to making maps, I read how to make a map. But how do people get started. It seems crazy to just draw a real world map from scratch. I read something about importing an SVG or bitmap and tracing it, but I don't know where to find/ how to convert the maps I found into that.

Best place to find maps, both already in SVG and for tracing by hand, is Wikipedia - or more precisely, [Wikimedia Commons](http://commons.wikimedia.org/).

IM sure with MatmaRex. Wikimedia Commons is this place.

Wikipedia is down today, at least to the US, in protest of the new possible law..

The English language part of Wikipedia, i.e. the largest part, is down all over the world.