Thanks for the info.  Geonames has both "Springfield" and "Springfield
Township" as places in Bucks County.  I may have to break with the
formatting rule on these presumably rare occasions since a user can select
Springfield Township as a place name.

Ethan

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Lovins, Daniel <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Hi Ethan.
>
> I think I may be able to help answer part of your question. There's a
> Library of Congress Rule Interpretation to AACR2 23.2 (LCRI 23.2
> "Modification of the Name" section 5) which states "For U.S. townships
> (called "towns" in some states) that encompass one or more local communities
> and the surrounding territory, ... add the term after the name of the
> state." And gives the following example:
>
> 151 ## $a Kintire (Minn. : Township)
>
> So I guess there's a difference between Springfield, PA the "town" and
> Springfield, PA the "Township", namely, that the latter includes more than
> just the town of Springfield.
>
> Daniel
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Ethan Gruber
> Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 11:02 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [CODE4LIB] A "right" way for recording a place name?
>
> 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
>