Gazetteer

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(Redirected from World gazetteer)

A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary; an important reference for information about places and place-names (see: toponomy), used in conjunction with an atlas. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup of a country or region, the social statistics and physical features, such as mountains, waterways, or roads. Examples of information you would find include the location of places, dimensions of physical features, population, GDP, literacy rate, and etc. World gazetteers usually consist of an alphabetical listing of countries, with pertinent statistics for each one, with some gazetteers listing information on cities of varying sizes.

Short-form gazetteers, often used in conjuction with computer mapping and GIS systems, may simply contain a list of place-names together with their locations in latitude and longitude or other spatial referencing systems. Short form gazetteers appear as a place-name index in the rear of major published atlases. Descriptive gazetteers may include lengthy textual descriptions of the places they contain, including explanation of industries, government, geography, together with historical perspectives. Thematic gazetteers list places or geographical features by theme; for example fishing ports, nuclear power stations or historic buildings. Their common element is that the geographical location is an important attribute of the features listed.

Gazetteer editors gather information from government official reports, the census, together with numerous other sources, and organize it in digest form.

Gazetteers can be found in reference sections of most libraries as well as on the Web.

Contents

Worldwide

Examples of electronic world gazetteers can be found at:

  • The World Gazetteer
    • for a given city it gives the country, province, population, coordinates, population rank among all towns within the country
    • for each country it gives a map and table of provinces with area and population, a map of cities, an alphabetical table of cities, and a table of top cities - tables can be sorted by a column of choice
    • for each province it gives an alphabetical table of cities.
  • Worldwide Index - Tageo.com – contains 2,700,000 places including US towns
    • for each city it gives the satellite map location, country, province, coordinates (dd,dms), variant names and nearby places.
    • for each country it gives population, currency, area, flag, major mountains, population, main cities and airports.
  • Falling Rain Global Gazetteer
    • Contains 2,900,000 towns outside the US (more than the other two gazetteers). For a given country and town it gives coordinates, altitude, weather forecast, and a map showing the position of the town with respect to topography and borders and bodies of water (not with respect to other towns); it also lists towns which are very nearby, within 3 km, with direction.
  • ESRI World Gazetteer
    • for a given city it gives a map showing the position of the town with respect to some other cities, borders and bodies of water.
  • The CIA World Factbook
    • http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
    • Compiled by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, this reference includes country-level data on all countries recognized by the United States. The World Fact Book gives information for each country on geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues. Cross check with other references as this work contains numerous errors.

Asia

  • East Himalayan Gazetteer
    • Compiled by Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, UK. An online gazetteer of 5,000 plant collecting localities in East Nepal, Sikkim, Darjeeling District, Bhutan and the Chumbi Valley (Tibet).

Australia

Canada

United Kingdom

United States


Thematic Gazetteers

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