Dear colleagues
Here at the University of Hull we are steadily cataloguing our extensive
collection of Ordnance Survey maps, providing subject headings for the
significant places covered by each sheet. Like many other libraries, we
use Library of Congress subject headings, and so to conform to LC usage,
we qualify place names that occur more than once in the constituent
countries of the UK with the local government area to which they belong,
e.g. Preston
<http://leisure.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/leisure/products.jsp?xvalue=518500&
yvalue=430500&q=preston&zoomindex=3®ionkey=GB&minx=0&maxx=0&miny=0&ma
xy=0&placename=Preston&publisher=allpub> (East Riding of Yorkshire,
England), Preston (Wiltshire, England) and Preston (Gloucestershire,
England).
This all sounds straightforward, but unfortunately we have the problem
that the Library of Congress doesn't have headings for every place in
the UK, and has only kept up with changes to local government areas very
patchily. Hence it uses the names of administratively defunct counties
in the cases of Driffield (Humberside, England) and Bradford (West
Yorkshire, England), but has adopted the current unitary authority names
for Bootle (Sefton, England)
<http://authorities.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Redirect%7CJ&SEQ=20
090128045259&PID=p-vRXIFCh4oxCNQgPCOmuEvULzeD&SA=Bootle+%28Sefton,+Engla
nd%29> and Preston
<http://leisure.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/leisure/products.jsp?xvalue=518500&
yvalue=430500&q=preston&zoomindex=3®ionkey=GB&minx=0&maxx=0&miny=0&ma
xy=0&placename=Preston&publisher=allpub> (East Riding of Yorkshire,
England). The only way to achieve total consistency would be to use
current unitary authorities as listed in the OS gazetteer. There is the
further complication that former counties such as West Yorkshire and
Humberside are still used as postal addresses, so that the
administratively correct heading Bradford (Bradford, England) looks
wrong as well as eccentric and uninformative.
We would be interested to hear from other libraries and individuals as
to how they deal with this particular can of worms.
Best wishes
Richard Lamin
Cataloguer
Brynmor Jones Library
University of Hull
Cottingham Road
Hull
HU6 7RX
01482 465966
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