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Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 15:30:42 -0400
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: National gazetteer of the United States of America
Sender: [log in to unmask]



This is in response to the inquiry from Ms. Mayo at East Carolina
University Library regarding the various volumes of the National Gazetteer
of the United States.  That series is U.S. Geological Survey Professional
Paper 1200 with each State, Territory, and Commonwealth to have been
published as a separate volume.  Since 1982, nine volumes were published.
They are:

New Jersey 1982
Delaware 1983
Kansas 1984
Arizona 1986
Indiana 1988
South Dakota 1989
Concise 1990 (in compliance with United Nations resolutions)
North Dakota 1990
Florida 1991.

In the meantime, the bound volumes to which Ms. Mayo refers, were meant to
be, and were in fact termed, interim gazetteers, that is, until such time
as the official volume of USGS Professional Paper 1200 could be published.
The only difference, other than appearance, between the formal volume and
the interim volume was that the interim volume did not have variant names
cross-referenced to the official name.  Ironically, after a formal volume
was published, users still requested the interim format even of the nine
published volumes since that format reflected the dynamic maintenance and
compilation efforts that are still ongoing.   Publication of the formal
volumes were costly in funds and preparation time, so publishing one or two
each year was the maximum.  Shortly after the Florida volume was published,
we released Version 1 of the Digital Gazetteer of the United States
(compact disk), which represented the entire nation with a powerful search
engine.   We are presently at Version 5 with the next version to be
spatially enabled (sometime in late 2001).  The sales of the compact disk
were brisk, and  formal and interim gazetteer requests and sales suffered.
Declining requests in favor of the compact disk along with re-prioritized
resources caused a "temporary" suspension of publishing the formal volumes
that is still in effect.  Further, even the interim version is no longer
available, which was based upon a decision in April 1998.  The reason is
declining requests for any conventional version of the gazetteers because
each State, Territory, and Commonwealth gazetteer as well as several
topical gazetteers are available for downloading from the Geographic Names
Information System (GNIS) website, free of charge.  These digital
gazetteers are updated every six months or so, or when there has been
significant activity in a particular State.  The website address is
<http://mapping.usgs.gov/www/gnis>, then click on download.

We realize that some may still want conventional gazetteers, but the
decision was made based upon numbers of such requests, two in 1999, and
only one thus far in 2000.  By the way, the State digital gazetteers are
being downloaded from the website at an average rate of 100 PER DAY.
Please let us know if anyone has questions.

Roger L. Payne
Executive Secretary,
  U.S. Board on Geographic Names
Manager, Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)
703.648.4544
[log in to unmask]
East Carolina University alumnus

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