One of the recent questions on the list concerned where to get US Board on
Geographic Names Gazetteers.  Part of Ed Taylor's reply on Maps-L was an
announcement of a CD-ROM version produced by GDE Systems called GEOname Digital
Gazetteer.  At about the same time I received a flyer describing the CD and
making a special, 55% off, offer to Librarians.  Under this offer the CD costs
$450 and annual updates are $300.  I went into the Company's Home Page
(http://www.GDEsystems.com), looked over their info, and left a message asking
for more specific info.  Brett Carey, their GEOname Marketing Manager answered
my questions and sent more info.  It appears that the special 55% off offer to
libraries also extends to all "educational professionals".
 
     The GEOname Digital Gazetteer, from their info, is a worldwide place names
 database with 4.4 million geographically-referenced feature names.  It is
derived from a February 1995 copy of the Defense Mapping Agency Geographic
Names Database of non-US place names.
 
     A review of the CD has appeared in the Sept.95 issue of GIS World.  The
review is postive but does not answer all my questions.  Do any of you on
the list have this CD and if so what are your reactions?  I am particularly
interested in how easy it is for the public to use.  I would probably put it
up on one of the public use terminals.  The info from the company says data
can be downloaded from the CD into ArcView - how easy is this?  I would like
to load the CD in my CD-ROM stack in the Map Room server and access the data
over the Map Room LAN.  Has anyone done this?
 
     Is this the only CD-ROM source for the data?
 
     I will either summarize or send all replys to the list.
 
John Sutherland
Curator of Maps
University of Georgia
Moderator, MAPS-L