Hi Julie,
I just tried the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency search. I didn't find it all that intuitive or user friendly. I tried searching Paris (France).
I don't see how linking will necessarily work if you are trying to set up information that can be indexed and searched. So I have these questions.
1) How are you expecting researchers to use these coordinates? To search your own geographic collections or outside geographic collections?
2) What is the coverage of the material being cataloged? Is it local, regional, national or international? Local names may not be official but may be of far more use in regards to searching - particularly when you are dealing with structures or small locations as opposed to large geographic features.
[see note from USGS 1 Oct 2014: As a result of reprioritized budgets and resources, the decision has been made to suspend the maintenance of some administrative (i.e. cultural or manmade) feature names in The National Map and to discontinue the maintenance of all administrative names through the GNIS public interface at this site (http://geonames.usgs.gov).]
3) How many items are you planning on doing this for? If you assume 3 minutes for each item to go to website to either confirm the geographic coordinates or get a link to a resource, how many minutes are you looking at and is it worth the investment in time?
4) What fields does your ILS index? I worked on one system in Australia that didn't retrieve series titles under a title search! Just because it's a valid MARC field doesn't mean your ILS will actually treat it the way you expect.
5) What coordinates are you using? WGS84 or GEO URI or both? You may need to add a subfield for the style of coordinates.
WGS8448° 51′ 24.12″ N, 2° 21′ 2.88″ E GEO URI 48.8567, 2.3508
http://lo-f.at/glahn/2011/09/geo-uri---location-as-a-resource.html
6) If you do want to use a link, what sort of a link will you make and will you need to work with Systems to make it happen? ie. do you just want to send them to Wikipedia or GeoHack search screen and let them manually input data? Or do you want a link that takes inputs the coordinate data for them and then takes them directly to an information page? The second will almost certainly require systems assistance but users may expect it because they are used to retrieving e-journals by links containing ISSNs.
https://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/ vs
http://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?params=48.8567_N_2.3508_E
and, of course,
7) RDA or AACR2? RDA may have some funky rules I'm not aware of. for example, requiring use of the Geo URI as its more metadata - y
Wikipedia will give you WGS coordinates for famous buildings as well as cities and geographic features. And, if you click on the coordinate, it will send you to GeoHack which will give you the URI. It may also give you official names for local landmarks. For example: Bidwell Mansion in Chico CA is officially Bidwell Mansion State Historical Park but nobody uses the official name locally. So Wikipedia may be your most time efficient choice, depending on the answers above.
deb
________________________________
From: Susan Moore <susan.moore-***@public.gmane.org>
To: AUTOCAT-***@public.gmane.org
Sent: Wednesday, 22 October 2014 12:44 AM
Subject: Re: [ACAT] Best way to catalog geographic information?
Julie,
Getting coordinate information into bibliographic records for non-map
items
is an area of increasing interest. As a cataloger that has map cataloging
as a part of my duties, I find this exciting.
On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Julie Huddle <
Post by Julie HuddleI will be starting an internship which will involve cataloging. I have
been asked to help develop the best way to record the geographic
coordinates of research items so that patrons can find resources about a
geographic area of interest. After reading Bidney's 2010 article, I now
1. How difficult and effective would the official form of geographic terms be for this?
I'd say using the official form of the term would be very effective. That's
the whole point of authority control, after all. If your geographic area
isn't in the name authority file, then I'd go the the U.S. Board for
Geographic Names (http://geonames.usgs.gov/). Here there are three links to
interfaces to search
for the form of name. Two are hosted by the U.S.
Geological Survey (the one for domestic names and the one for Antarctic
names) and the other is hosted by the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency (for the rest of the world). These sites are helpful because they
give you the form of name and coordinates.
2. If I record the geographic coordinates of a resource, should I use the
Post by Julie Huddlecenter or corner of the area covered?
If you are giving the coordinates for a spot in the area, you should give
the center point (or at least as close to center as possible). When you
search for a city at the NGA site, they give you the center point of the
city.
3. Would using a geographic search interface such as MapHappy or Yahoo!Map
Post by Julie Huddlebe worth the trouble?
I've not used these so I don't know if they would be worth the effort.
Susan Moore
University of Northern Iowa
Cedar Falls, IA 50613
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