Gazetteers

Gazetteers have traditionally been known as dictionaries of placenames, and they are familiar as reference volumes containing short descriptions of named geographic places or as indices at the back of atlases containing lists of placenames providing the page number and map grid where each place can be found. As electronic data sets, gazetteers are organized sets of information, knowledge organization systems (KOS), containing a subset of what is known about a selection of named geographic places (also known as features). Each gazetteer has a particular scope and purpose that dictate what types of features are included, the geographic scope of coverage, and the details given for each entry. Gazetteers link placenames to geographic locations and categorize named places according to feature-typing schemes. They are the ...