I had the opportunity to examine a commercial product, a digital
gazeteer on DC-Rom called GEOname, put out by GDESystems, address below.
I found it to be excellent, though it was quite expensive and my
institution (Museum of Victoria, Melbourne) was not able to afford it
and the disk was returned.  However, the system provided a list of
country names and codes and, most valuable,  historical information on
all kinds of geographical features.

Should anyone on the list wish to follow up on the database, the address
for inquiries is:

GDE Systems, Inc
Geographic Information Department (MZ 1211-M)
P.O. Box 509009
San Diego, California  92150-9009
U.S.A.

(619) 675 2623   fax (619) 675 1721
Home page: http://www.gdesystems.com
EMail:  [log in to unmask]

The person I dealt with was the GEOname Marketing Manager, Brett A.
Carey

*************************************
Dr Ron Vanderwal
Senior Curator, Oceanic Anthropology
Museum of Victoria. P.O. Box 666E
Melbourne, Vic, Australia  3000
61 03 9651 6796     Fax 61 03 9651 6129
[log in to unmask]
**************************************

> ----------
> From:         Leonard Will[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent:         Monday, 2 June 1997 5:18 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: Accession numbers, Ethnography and Country codes.
>
> In article <v01540b04afb6fbd346f5@[194.90.120.193]>, "Susan Hazan, The
> Ruth Youth Wing, Jerusalem" <[log in to unmask]> writes
> >I am interested in finding a uniformed method (maybe refered to in a
> >bibilography) of assigning catalogue numbers to an ethnography
> collection.
> >These numbers will serve us in our newly acquired database.  I have
> found
> >particular difficulties when dealing with the Eastern European
> countries
> >who have been over-run again and again.  Does a standard list of
> codes
> >denoting countries exist?
>
> The heading of this message may cause confusion, because
> classification
> codes for subjects or countries have, generally and preferably,
> nothing
> to do with accession numbers. (See the other threads headed (rather
> unhelpfully) "Cataloguing information request" and "Catalogue
> numbering"
> in which we have been discussing accession numbers and the
> desirability
> of avoiding meaningful structure within them.)
>
> The best hope for a system to standardise indexing by country names,
> taking account of historical changes, seems to be the promised Getty
> "Thesaurus of geographical names", but as far as I know that has not
> yet
> appeared. (See http://www.gii.getty.edu/gii/proj_standards.html). Does
> anyone have any news of it? Their January 1995 discussion paper gave a
> good account of the way in which they planned to deal with the name
> change problems: "Request for Comment Issued for New Vocabulary
> Coordination System for Getty Information Institute Authorities: Art &
> Architecture Thesaurus, Union List of Artist Names, and Thesaurus of
> Geographic Names" It is mentioned, but not given in full, at
> http://www.gii.getty.edu/gii/newsarch.html#article6
>
> There is an ISO list of country codes (ISO 3166 - though this may have
> changed in later editions) but as far as I know it just gives a list
> of
> countries at the date of publication.
>
> If you just want to classify areas down to about the level of a
> county,
> you could also look at Table 2 of the Dewey Decimal Classification:
> "Geographic areas, periods, persons". This also just represents the
> status at the date of publication, though.
>
> There is no easy solution to tracking historical place name changes in
> a
> database, though there are several complex ones. Not only do the names
> of countries change, but so do the political and administrative
> hierarchies into which places fall. Boundaries change too, so the same
> name does not always apply to the same area.
>
> Leonard Will
> --
> Willpower Information       (Partners: Dr Leonard D Will, Sheena E
> Will)
> Information Management Consultants                 Tel: +44 181 372
> 0092
> 27 Calshot Way, Enfield, Middlesex, EN2 7BQ, UK    Fax: +44 181 372
> 0094
> [log in to unmask]
> [log in to unmask]
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