Oh yes, was not suggesting another gazetteer. Was suggesting using an
existing open source gazetteer to do a 'good enough' mapping of LCSH
place names to coordinates. I think you could get pretty far with that.
As someone hinted at (Eric Childress?), it's possible they have in fact
already done this for LCSH as part of the FAST project. I remain very
curious to find out more about what they've done with the FAST project,
I think they've done a lot of potentially useful things that we don't
know the details on. But I also don't entirely understand who outside of
OCLC can get the FAST data at what cost. If FAST already has LCSH place
name to coordinate mapping, is there any way for me to use this for my
own projects? I don't think so, I do not think it is open access data,
alas.
Jonathan
Jimmie Lundgren wrote:
> Hi Jonathan and All,
> Thanks for your interest.
>
> The point is not another gazetteer, but to deliver available library
> resources more effectively and efficiently to patrons based on a place
> of interest. Many dusty old books hide data valuable to researchers.
> There generally are records with geographic subjects for them. Deriving
> coordinates from GNIS and other sources and inserting them in the
> authority records that can connect with those subject terms can enable
> retrieval based on coordinates. This is thus independent of language
> used in the catalog. (Easy on the catalogers, harder on the LC persons
> doing the loading and on the systems developers). For various reasons,
> it will likely be center point data rather than attempts at bounding
> boxes used for this purpose.
>
> For more, see MARC Proposal 2006-06 at
> http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2006/2006-06.html
>
> Would love to talk with some of you more about this at the MARC Formats
> Interest Group where Naomi Young and I are speaking on "Courage to
> Change MARC." This will be at the ALA meeting in Anaheim, Calif., June
> 28, 2008 at 1:30 PM in the Doubletree Hotel, Tuscany F room.
>
> Thanks,
> Jimmie
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind
> Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 12:22 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] update on lcsh??
>
> 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 - 14:46:42 EDT