WebWise 2004

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Web-Wise 2004 Sharing Digital Resources March
3-5, Chicago, Illinois   Going Places in the
Catalog! Enhancing Scholarly and Educational
Resources with Geospatial Information Michael
Buckland, Fredric C. Gey and Ray R. Larson.
Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative,
University of California Berkeley. http//ecai.or
g/imls2002/
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• People want to search by place!
• For
• Mammals in Madagascar
• Octopi in the Pacific
• Castles in Quercy
• Hikes in the Himalayas . . .

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• Library catalogs offer weak support for
  geographical search
• Place name in title if present - and
• Place names as / in Subject Headings (MARC 6XXz,
  651)
• Search of other geographical clues not supported,
  e.g.
• Geographical scope note (MARC 043 n-us-id
  Idaho)
• Geographical codes in classification numbers,
  e.g.
• the 7946 for San Francisco Bay in Dewey
  917.94604
• No spatial relationships Within / near / next /
  between.
• Map interfaces not yet provided

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Place names are problematic - Variant forms
St. Petersburg, ????? ???????????,
Saint-Pétersbourg, . . . - Multiple names Cluj,
in Romania / Roumania / Rumania, is also called
Klausenburg and Kolozsvar. - Names changes
Bombay ? Mumbai. - HomographsVienna, VA, and
Vienna, Austria 50 Springfields. -
Anachronisms No Germany before 1870 - Vague,
e.g. Midwest, Silicon Valley - Unstable
boundaries 19th century Poland Balkans USSR.
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BUT places have coordinates latitude and
longitude. . . . and a GAZETTEER links places and
spaces! A gazetteer is a place name authority
file and . . . indicates what kinds of place
Feature type . . . objectively specifies
latitude and longitude and . . . disambiguates
similar place names and . . . brings variant
names together and . . . allows places to be
displayed on maps.
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Project Going Places in the Catalog Improved
Geographical Access (IMLS) http//ecai.org/imls
2002/ Project objectives (1) Better use of data
already in library catalog records for
clarification of place and space (2) Link
online catalogs with online gazetteers (3) Map
display of search results (4) Map interface for
spatial queries (5) Extend spatial queries
beyond library to other resources relating to the
same locality.
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Geo-temporal search interface. Place names found
in documents. Gazetteer provided lat. long.
Places displayed on map.
Timebar?
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Zoom on map. Click on place brings list of
records. Click on record displays text.
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Places and place names have temporal
aspects. Time period names resemble place names.
- Ambiguous Civil war, Renaissance, . . .
which? - Unstable The European War, The Great
War, World War I - Periods have objective
calendar dates as well as name - Dates can
display in time-lines, chronologies. So Time
period directory design resembling a
gazetteer Place name Kind of place Where
(lat./long.) When Period name Kind of period When
(dates) Where
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Geographical subject headings with "Civil war"
as chronological subdivision
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Catalog search for Civil War. Geo-temporal
display of sets of results. Click on choice to
retrieve documents.
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Linking webpages to library catalogs Websites
often contain bibliographies. Another option is
to generate a live search from the a webpage,
using the Z39.50 protocol, to search for latest
available resources about that topic or
place. Example See historic sites pages of ECAI
Iraq portal of internet accessible resources
relating to Iraqi antiquities. Clicking on link
generates searches of major U.S. and U.K.
research libraries for resources relating to that
site. http//ecai.org/iraq/
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Multimedia search One cannot directly across
different genres image, text, numeric data, but
one can search indirectly across genres using
common metadata (e.g. thesaurus). For
socio-economic numeric datasets, search by place
is necessary. Place names alone are inadequate,
gazetteers are needed. Similarly with place name
directories and biographical dictionaries.
(Lesson learned from IMLS NLP project Seamless
Searching of Numeric and Textual Resources
1999-2002)
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Place (and time) are broadly important across
numerous tools and genres including, e.g.
Language atlases. Library catalogs Biographica
l dictionaries. Bibliographies Archival finding
lists Museum records etc., etc. Biographical
dictionaries are make heavy use of place and time
statements Born, Moscow, 1881, . . .
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BUT better standards for gazetteer content and
format needed. - Multilingual and multiscript
entries - Specialists need specialized Feature
Type Thesauri, e.g. Medieval Chinese
administrative units 200 feature types in
British canal archaeology. Different kinds of
Buddhist temple. - Always declare which
thesaurus is being used - Short generic standard
thesaurus for upward compatibility - Preferred
name always a matter of local choice. - Records
time coded because places and names unstable -
Harmonize geotemporal metadata across standards
families Based on A Multilingual Gazetteer
System for Integrating Spatial and Cultural
Resources (NSF-ITR funded) http//ecai.org/projec
ts/gazetteer/
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The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative Advancing
scholarship through increased attention to place
and time invites you to a Congress of Cultural
Atlases The Human Record Berkeley, May
7-10 http//ecai.org/Activities/Congress2004/ Mic
hael Buckland buckland_at_sims.berkeley.edu