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Social Science Human Geography

Placing Names

Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers

edited by Merrick Lex Berman, Humphrey Southall & Ruth Mostern

preface by Peter Bol

contributions by Michael Frank Goodchild, Helen Kerfoot, Ryan Shaw, Raj Singh, Karl Grossner, Krzysztof Janowicz, Carsten Kessler, Rainer Simon, Leif Isaksen, Elton Barker, Pau de Soto Canamares, Johan Ahlfeldt, Marc Wick, Janelle Jenstad, Paul S. Ell, Lorna Hughes, Michael R. Fournier, Youcheol Kim, Byungnam Yoon, Jonghyuk Kim, Hyunjong Kim, Mark Henderson, Karl E. Ryavec, Tsunetoshi Mizoguchi, Pi-ling Pai & I-chun Fan

Publisher
Indiana University Press
Initial publish date
Aug 2016
Category
Human Geography
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780253022448
    Publish Date
    Aug 2016
    List Price
    $66.00

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Description

Well before the innovation of maps, gazetteers served as the main geographic referencing system for hundreds of years. Consisting of a specialized index of place names, gazetteers traditionally linked descriptive elements with topographic features and coordinates. Placing Names is inspired by that tradition of discursive place-making and by contemporary approaches to digital data management that have revived the gazetteer and guided its development in recent decades. Adopted by researchers in the Digital Humanities and Spatial Sciences, gazetteers provide a way to model the kind of complex cultural, vernacular, and perspectival ideas of place that can be located in texts and expanded into an interconnected framework of naming history. This volume brings together leading and emergent scholars to examine the history of the gazetteer, its important role in geographic information science, and its use to further the reach and impact of spatial reasoning into the digital age.

About the authors

Editorial Reviews

 

Those working in computing-related aspects of geographer will find a useful primer in all things gazetteer-related, with special focus on cultural aspects of this emerging and very important sub-field.

Journal of Historical Geography

 

Placing Names should be on every digital scholar's bookshelf for its concepts, suggestions, intellectual history, and warnings to newcomers in the digital humanities. It announces the arrival of digital gazetteers as intellectual products to be understood and reckoned with by anyone who deals with history and place.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History