An expert said the theft, by a 50 year old, would go down as one of the "largest and most prolonged" library thefts in criminal history.
Edward Forbes Smiley III, from Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, was jailed for three and a half years by a US court after admitting cutting the historic charts, worth a total of STG1.6 million (A$4.04 million), from their bindings.
The British Library, from which he confessed to taking a representation of the world from 1520, had argued he should spend as long as 10 years behind bars.
That map was by the German mathematician and cartographer Peter Apian, and was cut from a book once owned by Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer.
The library believes Smiley stole three other maps from its collection, a claim he has denied.
In a Connecticut court the library's scholarship and collections director, Dr Clive Field, said Smiley's actions would go down as one of the largest and systematic of all library thefts.
The antiquarian’s other victims included the Boston and New York public libraries and the Harvard and Yale university libraries.
Smiley was arrested last year after a librarian at Yale University found a razor blade on the floor of the room where he was looking at rare books.
When police confronted him they found seven maps worth nearly STG500,000 hidden in his briefcase and pockets.
His arrest sparked a global FBI investigation which saw agents email the world's top map curators asking them to check for gaps in their collections.
In June, he pleaded guilty to a charge of theft of major artwork, admitting stealing 96 maps, later admitting to another two thefts, bringing the total to 98.
Smiley sold the maps to private dealers or collectors but most, including the one from the British Library, have been recovered.
Prosecutors claim he acted out of resentment towards the prestigious institutions that became his victims and to pay for his expensive tastes and mounting debts.