1 and 2 probably represent two different geographic levels with the
same name. There is a township (county subdivision) called
Springfield, which also contains a "city" called Springfield.
If you are planning to generate LCSH placenames, one thing to note is
that LCSH typically uses old-style state abbreviations ("Mass.",
"Pa.") instead of the more common postal abbreviations ("MA", "PA").
I thought there might be some way to use id.loc.gov but for some
reason none of your example LCSHeadings show up in a search for
"springfield" -- maybe place headings are not comprehensively included
in id.loc.gov?
Keith
On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 11:02 AM, Ethan Gruber <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've just about completed a new XForms-based interface for querying
> geonames.org to populate the <geogname> element in EAD. An XML
> representation of a geographical place returned by the geonames APIs
> includes its name, e.g., Springfield, country name, and several levels
> administrative names (Sangamon County, Illinois). Is there some sort of
> official way of textually representing a place? In LCSH, one finds:
>
> 1 Springfield (Bucks County, Pa.)
> 2 Springfield (Bucks County, Pa. : Township)
> 3 Springfield (Burlington County, N.J.)
>
> Why 1 and 2 are distinct terms in LCSH, I don't know. The mode for dealing
> with American place names seems to be "[name of place] ([administrative name
> - lower level], [administrative name - upper level])". For a European city,
> we find "Berlin (Germany)"
>
> Are these examples in LCSH the most common way to textually record places,
> or are there other examples I should look at?
>
> Thanks,
> Ethan
>
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