Quoting Keith Jenkins <[email protected]>:
I thought there might be some way to use id.loc.gov but for some
reason none of your example LCSHeadings show up in a search for
"springfield" -- maybe place headings are not comprehensively included
in id.loc.gov?
id.loc.gov right now only has "subject-only" headings. Geographic
names are in the "names" authority file, along with persons and
corporate bodies. authorities.loc.gov has them all.
VIAF.org has the geographic names along with the personal and
corporate, although oddly you can limit your search in VIAF to
personal or corporate but not to geographic.
At one point LC announced that they would be adding the names
authorities to id.loc.gov, but then reversed that and said that VIAF
is / will be the source for LC names. I'm not sure it makes sense to
separate the two authority files since most names can also be
subjects. Perhaps LC hasn't really decided what to do.
kc
Keith
On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 11:02 AM, Ethan Gruber <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi all,
I've just about completed a new XForms-based interface for querying
geonames.org to populate the <geogname> element in EAD. An XML
representation of a geographical place returned by the geonames APIs
includes its name, e.g., Springfield, country name, and several levels
administrative names (Sangamon County, Illinois). Is there some sort of
official way of textually representing a place? In LCSH, one finds:
1 Springfield (Bucks County, Pa.)
2 Springfield (Bucks County, Pa. : Township)
3 Springfield (Burlington County, N.J.)
Why 1 and 2 are distinct terms in LCSH, I don't know. The mode for dealing
with American place names seems to be "[name of place] ([administrative name
- lower level], [administrative name - upper level])". For a European city,
we find "Berlin (Germany)"
Are these examples in LCSH the most common way to textually record places,
or are there other examples I should look at?
Thanks,
Ethan
--
Karen Coyle
[email protected] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
