Indirect geospatial referencing through place names in the digital library: Alexandria digital library experience with developing and implementing gazetteers

All types of information can be referenced to a geographic place, Maps, aerial photographs, and remote sensing images are spatially georeferenced. Other forms of information such as books, articles, research papers, pieces of music, and art are often linked to a geographic location through place names (geographic names). A gazetteer (a dictionary of geographic names) that is spatially referenced itself provides the bridge between these two types of georeferencing. With a georeferenced gazetteer translation service, a user can start with a geographic name and find information that is described with either geographic names or with geospatial coordinates. Use of this powerful indirect geospatially referencing tool can be applied as a common approach to libraries, bibliographic files, data centers, web resources, and museum and specimen collections and can be particular useful across language barriers since latitude and longitude coordinates are universally understood. The Alexandria Digital Library has implemented a gazetteer component for its georeferenced digital library. This experience resulted in the creation of a Gazetteer Content Standard, a Feature Type Thesaurus, and an operational interactive gazetteer service. This paper describes the development of these components and illustrates the use of this tool in a georeferenced digital library. It also relates progress in working with Federal agencies and others toward developing shareable gazetteer data through Digital Gazetteer Information Exchange programs.