Hill, L.L.; Frew, J.; Zheng, Q.: Geographic names : the implementation of a gazetteer in a georeferenced digital library (1999)
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- Abstract
- The Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) Project has developed a content standard for gazetteer objects and a hierarchical type scheme for geographic features. Both of these developments are based on ADL experience with an earlier gazetteer component for the Library, based on two gazetteers maintained by the U.S. federal government. We define the minimum components of a gazetteer entry as (1) a geographic name, (2) a geographic location represented by coordinates, and (3) a type designation. With these attributes, a gazetteer can function as a tool for indirect spatial location identification through names and types. The ADL Gazetteer Content Standard supports contribution and sharing of gazetteer entries with rich descriptions beyond the minimum requirements. This paper describes the content standard, the feature type thesaurus, and the implementation and research issues. A gazetteer is list of geographic names, together with their geographic locations and other descriptive information. A geographic name is a proper name for a geographic place and feature, such as Santa Barbara County, Mount Washington, St. Francis Hospital, and Southern California. There are many types of printed gazetteers. For example, the New York Times Atlas has a gazetteer section that can be used to look up a geographic name and find the page(s) and grid reference(s) where the corresponding feature is shown. Some gazetteers provide information about places and features; for example, a history of the locale, population data, physical data such as elevation, or the pronunciation of the name. Some lists of geographic names are available as hierarchical term sets (thesauri) designed for information retreival; these are used to describe bibliographic or museum materials. Examples include the authority files of the U.S. Library of Congress and the GeoRef Thesaurus produced by the American Geological Institute. The Getty Museum has recently made their Thesaurus of Geographic Names available online. This is a major project to develop a controlled vocabulary of current and historical names to describe (i.e., catalog) art and architecture literature. U.S. federal government mapping agencies maintain gazetteers containing the official names of places and/or the names that appear on map series. Examples include the U.S. Geological Survey's Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency's Geographic Names Processing System (GNPS). Both of these are maintained in cooperation with the U.S. Board of Geographic Names (BGN). Many other examples could be cited -- for local areas, for other countries, and for special purposes. There is remarkable diversity in approaches to the description of geographic places and no standardization beyond authoritative sources for the geographic names themselves.
