Hi Emily,
I’d like to echo what Teresa says - the Archives Hub gets lots of descriptions with places in subjects, or names or book titles in subjects.
We don’t provide an API lookup at the moment (although we have introduced that for personal and organisational names, using VIAF), but we do link to the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names and Vision of Britain as good sources of place names. I would have thought a look up should really be via an API, where the source data is maintained, rather than importing a list of places.
I would say place names are the most tricky of all the ‘controlled’ index terms or access points. Whatever source you do use, make sure that you qualify it - we commonly get e.g. ‘Oxford’ with no qualification as to which Oxford is being referred to.
cheers,
Jane
> On 11 Apr 2017, at 12:18, Teresa Doherty <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi Emily
>
> Just to clarify. There is a Subject thesaurus option in CALM, but there is also a Places thesaurus option. I'd suggest using the Places option and avoid getting places confused with subjects ;)
>
> If you're looking at specific local UK names, then Humphrey's work http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk is the most comprehensive.
>
> If you're looking for more generic international geographic terms then I've found Getty useful
> http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/tgn/
>
> My collections have only required individual names being added consistently, not an import.
>
> It really depends what geographic coverage and level of specificity you're after. You start off thinking it's all very straightforward, only to trip over someone working on a Welsh medieval place names project. Place names can be very complicated.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Teresa
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Archivists, conservators and records managers. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of humphrey
> Sent: 10 April 2017 17:24
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Looking for list of geographic names for import into Axiell Calm
>
> > On 10 Apr 2017, at 16:43, Emily Gibson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I was wondering if anyone is using Axiell Calm to link subject terms to archival catalogue records, and if so, whether anyone has a list of geographic names in dscribe natural format that they would be willing to share. UKAT does not carry geographic names, so while I have imported the UKAT thesaurus into our instance of Calm, I was not able to import any geographic names. I would like to avoid adding geographic names one-by-one, if at all possible, which is why I'm hoping a list already exists. Axiell has informed me that they do not have such a list.
> >
> > Many thanks for any help or insights you may be able to offer, Emily
> >
> > Emily Gibson, MLIS
> > Project Cataloguer for Archives and Special Collections Library and
> > Academic Learning Services University of Roehampton | London | W15 5SZ
> > [log in to unmask] | www.roehampton.ac.uk
> >
> > Contact the list owner for assistance at
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
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>
> As we point out periodically, in 2001-4 we were funded by the lottery digitisation programme to computerise the main geographical name authorities identified by the National Council on Archives, notably including Youngs’ Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, and Melville Richards’ Welsh Administrative and Territorial Units, as well as various 19th century gazetteers:
>
> https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/ncarules/rules3.html
>
> A straightforward search interface is here:
>
> http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/expertsearch
>
> There is a linked data API here:
>
> http://data.pastplace.org/search
>
> If you simply use that address, you get back some documentation on how it works, but for example this returns information about places called Portsmouth:
>
> http://data.pastplace.org/search?q=portsmouth&format=n3&mode=precise
>
> The big current limitation is that what the lottery never funded was any work to sort out copyright issues. In the end, the Higher Education Funding Council did support some work, which means we can legally display the material on our web site, but this explains why the above linked data API does not include the more detailed information on administrative units. We are making a fresh push now to resolve the copyright issues, and also working on a more complete linked data API.
>
> We were talking to DS/Calm a couple of years ago about how Calm could be made to talk to our system, but then Axiell bought out DS and their attention went elsewhere.
>
> You can read about our information architecture in this article, but it makes a basic distinction between “places”, like Richmond, Surrey (our place no. 156), and administrative units, like the modern London Borough of Richmond on Thames (our unit no. 10084593), the 19th century poor law union (10043967) or the pre-1965 Municipal Borough (10025618). In general, the public talk about “places”, but only legally-defined units have clear boundaries or, in general, create records:
>
> http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01615440.2012.664101
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Humphrey Southall
>
>
> Professor of Historical Geography/
> Director, GB Historical GIS
> University of Portsmouth
> Geography Dept, Buckingham Bldg,
> Lion Terrace, Portsmouth PO1 3HE, UK
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