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 >