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
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