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Date:         Wed, 7 Sep 2005 10:20:15 -0700
Reply-To:     [log in to unmask]
Sender:       Subject Coordinates Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Mary Larsgaard <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: UCSB Map & Imagery Lab, Library
Subject:      Re: batch insertion of coordinates  into catalog records
Comments: To: Subject Coordinates Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
In-Reply-To:  <[log in to unmask]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed

My very limited information on this point is that it's the batch lookup and insertion that's difficult, although there are certainly other challenges. For example, we have a couple of text files that have a geographic area and then the bounding-box coordinates: - states of U.S. - counties of U.S. - nations of the world One would have to make sure date of data in the cartographic item matched the date of coordinates in the lists (basically 1980s or thereabouts). And you'd have to find a way to kick out, say, cartographic items with pre-1900 data (ok when that's the date of publication; more difficult by a good bit when there's an, e.g., 20th-cent date of pub but a pre-1900 date of data. If cataloger didn't use the MARC21 date-of-data field, 045, time period of content, then it's real difficult), to match correct bounding boxes with political area at a given date. So in theory, one could group one's catalog records by the geographic areas in the subject headings (but you'd have to figure out a way where a record with multiple geographic-area subject headings could have copies in each group), and then match against these text files, and then move the bounding box coordinates appropriate to the record into MARC21 |d,e,f and g. You'd also have to have a way to separate out those geog-area subject headings that weren't states, counties, natons - which would probably leave: - cities; could match those against world gazetteer's cities entries; we'd probably use the Alexandria Digital Library's Gazetteer http://middleware.alexandria.ucsb.edu/client/gaz/adl/index.jsp - other political areas (e.g., provinces of Canada; states of Australia): I've got a list of coords for Canadian provinces and there are probably lists out there for other political areas of nation's countries - non-polit areas, e.g., "Denver-Julesburg Basin"; these would be the most difficult since there aren't any firm boundaries as there are for political areas. Am sure I'm forgetting some of the other "challenges"... Mary Archie Warnock wrote: >Mary Larsgaard wrote: > > >>**yes indeedy. I remember a couple years back, a friend of mine who >>was cataloging photographs of portions of a city was going to enter >>coordinates into each record, unwisely mentioned that to someone at >>one of the utilities, who told her no-no, can't enter coordinates for >>non-cart.mtls. one experiment we'd like to do here at UCSB is >>download all of the non-cartmtl records in the library's online >>catalog, pull out all the ones that have geographic-area subject >>headings (which MARC21 makes very do-able), and then add coordinates >>to each record (that's the tricky part), and load records into >>Alexandria Digital Library catalog. >> >> > >Somewhere around here I had some code that I'd glommed to compute the >minimum bounding rectangle (MBR) from a polygonal footprint. That >simplifies the job to the point where it's relatively easy to do spatial >searching. > >For some time, I've maintained the search engine (Isearch) used on FGDC >metadata records and it does spatial searches (overlaps only, but >relevance ranked) on bounding rectangles, although it doesn't currently >compute the MBR from more complex polygons. It's not real MARC-aware >either, but that could be fixed. > >I'm curious where the coordinates might come from because obviously this >is a job that ought to be automated. Are there any easily-available >online gazetteers that will provide coordinates from place names which >would allow batch-insertion of geographic coordinates? > > >


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