GeoNames (www.geonames.org)
looks plain, unexciting, and bare-bones, but it hides a lot of power behind its
dull facade. Founded by Marc Wick, a self-employed software engineer in
Switzerland, the site contains over 10 million geographical names from all over
the world. GeoNames exists commercially as a web services tool for developers;
you may have benefited from it when using sites such as Bing Maps, the U.S.
Geological Survey, the BBC, and Nokia. Much of the data that moves below the
surface in those sites is available for free at www.geonames.org, and it can be used directly
by individuals in a variety of ways.
Although it has been around since at least 2006, I only recently
discovered GeoNames as a partner to The European Library (www.theeuropeanlibrary.org),
where it was mentioned as an authority file for geographic names. At the
GeoNames site itself, I soon found out, you can enter the name of just about
any city, state, region, country, lake, river, sea, mountain, or a slew of
other location or geopolitical entities, and find out what and where it is. When
I lost track of all the foreign place names I was reading in The Poisonwood Bible, for example, I
entered Kikongo into the search box at GeoNames,
clicked Search, and received a page (www.geonames.org/search.html?q=kikongo&country=)
telling me that Kikongo is a "populated place" in the Congo at S 5°
50' 12'' latitude and E 15° 1' 24'' longitude. Clicking on the hyperlinked
country name Congo, I got a country page (www.geonames.org/countries/CD/congo.html)
listing basic facts about the Congo: country name, ISO code, FIPS code,
capital, area, population, currency, languages, the names of neighboring
countries, and a tiny view of its national flag. There were also a line drawing
of the country and links to other sources of information (Administrative
Division, Feature Statistic, Largest Cities, Highest Mountains, Other Country
Names, and Wiki).
The site is not completely intuitive, and explanations are
minimal. If, like me, you've forgotten a lot of what you learned about
geography in a formal setting, you can explore and learn by working your way
down the links under Browse the Names at the left of the homepage.
Countries
The Countries page (www.geonames.org/countries/)
presents a table of over 300 countries, with columns for the country name,
capital, area (square kilometers), population, and its continental home. Clicking
the country name leads to a page like the one described above for the Congo,
though some have more complex data. Denmark, for example, shows
"dependencies" (Faroe Islands and Greenland) and Puerto Rico shows
that it "depends from" the United States. GeoNames uses English for all
country names, but an extremely useful feature resides below the "other
languages" link next to the country name: a table of names for that
country in the other languages of the world. So, for example, if you want to
know how they write "United
States " in Afrikaans, Arabic, or
Azerbaijani, just find the right language (click on the "language"
column to sort alphabetically).
In addition there are three columns for variations of the
ISO 3066 country codes: the two-character alpha codes, three-character alpha,
and three-digit numeric. I am familiar with many of the two-digit country codes
(US for USA, CA for Canada, DE for Germany, ES for Spain, etc.), though I would
have been hard pressed to name the international standard that defines the
codes. A fourth column gives FIPS codes, which I had to look up; FIPS is in
fact an outdated standard, withdrawn by NIST as a Federal Information
Processing Standard in 2008. I'll bet there are still some computer systems
that have not made the changeover, though, so I see why it would be useful for
the commercial part of the site. Any of the columns on the Countries page is
sortable by clicking on its header, once to put in descending order; click
again for ascending.
Cities, Mountains,
and ZIP Codes
The Largest Cities link from Browse on the homepage leads to
an interactive Google map and chart of ten cities. You can move the map to
re-center and select another part of the world, then select one of the pinpoint
locations to get a pop-up window with more detail. I moved the map to South
America to view cities in northern Argentina and adjoining countries. The
ten-city chart shows the country, population, and "feature" of each
city. I was puzzled to see that all my Argentine cities were "seat of a
first-order administrative division" except for Buenos Aires, which was
the "capital of a political entity" and Rosario, which was "seat
of a second-order administrative division." When I clicked on the pinpoint
for Rosario, the
pop-up window showed a
"geotree" link. GeoTree opens up a giant hierarchical outline that
shows the relationship of all divisions within the entity. Sure enough, Rosario
is the seat of the Departamento de
Rosario, which is one of 12 Departamentos
of the Provincia de Santa Fe, which
in turn is one of 24 provincias of
Argentina. The first-order cities of Córdoba, Mendoza, and San Miguel de Tucumán
that I had seen were all seats of provinces.
A similar map and chart structure appear when you click Highest
Mountains from the homepage, as also happens for Capitals, though in Capitals
you get 50 names in the chart.
The Postal Codes link goes to a page (www.geonames.org/postal-codes/)
with line drawings of more than 60 countries. You can enter a place name,
select a country, and receive a postal code; or enter a postal code, select the
country and find out what location it refers to. Depending on the country, some
of these are more refined than others.
Search
The keyword search box on the home page, where you are told
to "enter a location name," such as Paris,
Mount Everest, or New York, defaults to
searching all countries, but there is a drop-down menu to limit your search
term to any country of the world, from Afghanistan to Åland. You can then
"search" for a table of terms matching your location, or "show
on map" to bring up the Google map within the GeoNames site.
A link to Advanced Search (www.geonames.org/advanced-search.html?)
appears directly under the main keyword search box and offers three additional
options. You may select a "feature class" from a drop-down menu. Feature
classes are:
country, state, region
stream, lake
parks, area
city, village
road, railway
spot, building, farm
mountain, hill, rock
undersea
forest, heath
The second advanced search limiter is by Continent: Europe,
Africa, Asia, Oceania, North America, and South America,
with a default of All.
The third option is a simple checkbox, allowing a
"fuzzy search." Then, again, you may "search" for a text
table or "show on map."
Authorities and
Updating
The use of GeoNames as an authority file is interesting,
since the site allows any registered user to edit and add new names using a
wiki interface. For such a complex project on a worldwide scale, this makes
sense, and GeoNames has "ambassadors" (www.geonames.org/team.html) in
many countries of the world. No qualifications for ambassadorship are stated,
but names and email addresses are given; ambassadors specifically help with
knowledge of administrative divisions in their countries.
No qualifications other than registering are stated, either,
for site editors, but recent modifications are cataloged (www.geonames.org/recent-changes.html)
showing changes and who made them. A user manual (www.geonames.org/manual.html)
gives directions on how to update and a user forum (http://forum.geonames.org/) shows
conversations from people who seem to know a lot about geography and
programming.
Flattening the World
Capturing millions of locations all over the Earth and making
them searchable by name and viewable on maps is ambitious. Occasionally,
especially for less populated parts of the world, you will come across a
notation in GeoNames that says that insufficient map detail is available.
Mistakes are also made in identifying places or their exact location (there are
two entries for the town I live in, for example). But GeoNames is a first-stop resource
for looking up any geographic name--great for identifying and disambiguating
places (How many Medfords are there in the US, anyway?). It is also an
interesting example of a successful commercial venture that still offers data
for free.
Susanne Bjørner
provides editorial services to publishers, librarians, authors, and researchers
from a base near N 38° 3' 42" and W 0° 47' 37". Contact her at bjorner@earthlink.net or www.bjorner.info.
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