There are a variety of services that let you look up a human language
place and return a best-guess gazateer entry with coordinates. It's not
perfect of course, but works reasonably well.
One entirely free and non-commercial source of such a lookup is:
http://www.geonames.org/
There's both a web-service there, and also their entire data set is
downloadable (not sure if the software that heuristically guesses from
query-entered place name to formal specified place is open source, but
certainly this is software that can be developed if someone cares to put
resources behind it.)
So a reasonable approach to me would be machine connecting LCSH place
names to formal coordinates, and then human-entering coordinates only
for such places that does _not_ work for, on an as-discovered basis.
But the larger question is: Who would do even this? Is the cataloging
community capable of any change whatsoever, or has it been so
deprofessionalized and under-staffed that there's nobody left to do any
change at all? OCLC maybe?
Jonathan
Jimmie Lundgren wrote:
> On another front, geographic coordinate data is now able to be entered
> in name and subject MARC authority records for places (OCLC Tech Bull
> 255).
>
> This brings us to what my colleague Jorge Gonzalez calls "the crisis
> stage of a paradigm shift" in place-related access to library resources.
>
>
> How quickly can this data be compiled and actually loaded in LCSH and
> name authority records?
>
> Will OPAC developers empower users with GIS capabilities in catalogs, or
> will this opportunity languish while librarians chant "keyword is all we
> need"?
>
> Stay tuned ...
>
> Thanks,
> Jimmie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Neil Godfrey
> Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 2:50 AM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: [NGC4LIB] update on lcsh??
>
> Hi all,
>
> I have been out of the loop for a little while here, and would greatly
> appreciate it if anyone could point me to where I can bring myself up to
> date with the current state of play with the debate over controlled
> vocabularies for subjects, please. I recall some time back a fierce
> debate
> raging over the future of the LCSH. Has that been resolved yet? If not,
> is
> there a best place to search archives? Other sites? for a catch up?
>
> Many thanks,
> Neil Godfrey
>
> http://metalogger.wordpress.com
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Wed Jun 25 2008 - 10:55:25 EDT