[DDI-users] Geographic tags

[Elizabeth Bennett]

Hello, DDI colleagues  --

Now that CPANDA is up and running, we're moving on to work on some
projects that didn't get done in time for the launch. In particular,
we'd like to build an interface that provides access by geography -- so,
for example, a user seeking data about Cincinatti, Ohio, could click
through a geographic tree to get to data sets covering that city. 

We would like to use the <nation>, <geogCover> and <geogUnit> tags as
the source of geographic coverage information. <nation> is not a
problem, because all our data is from the U.S. However, I'm not sure
what to do with <geogCover> to ensure adequate indexing. I see this tag
is repeatable, so one option would be:

<geogCover>Ohio</geogCover>
<geogCover>Cincinnati</geogCover>

The problem is that we can't distinguish between state, city, county,
and region in this tag. The ideal solution would be an attribute like
<geogUnit> but specifiable as part of <geogCover>. In the meantime, the
best thing I can think of is:

<geogCover>State of Ohio</geogCover>
<geogCover>City of Cincinnati</geogCover>

But this isn't truly satisfactory because not all
states/cities/counties/census regions/MSAs (or other possible geographic
subdivisions) use a consistent vocabulary. What about parishes in
Louisiana, for instance? 

Has anyone else grappled with this and come up with a workable solution? 

Thanks for your help!

--
Elizabeth Z. Bennett
Project Manager/Associate Director
Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive
Princeton University Library
One Washington Road
Princeton NJ 08544-2098

phone: 609-258-7357
fax: 609-258-0441
ezb@princeton.edu

www.cpanda.org