Thats what I am doing with my world too...just building and building and building...adding more and more history and background info and stuff. Its kinda cool actually. BUT I don't know if the players will get involved at that level at least not until later...maybe they will...If you build it will they come?

As for the question I asked...I believe what I'm going to try to do is start printing the maps to scale on multiple sheets of paper and use them for exploring AND combat. perhaps even build a little map holder out of plywood, a hinge, and some plexi. Who knows That might help to draw them into the world a bit more too.

As a DM one of my weaknesses is expressing the machinations of the world around the players beyond the scope of what the players are doing. I often leave out some of those little details that help suspend disbelief like using different names for different currencies (as opposed to gold and silver, etc) referring to days and times of day by the game worlds standards and names as opposed to our own...etc...I really need to work on that. But this forum is a mapping forum I don't want to venture too far into DMing.