forwarded by Angie
-------- Original Message --------
As some members of this list will know, I am
co-editing a book about gazetteers,
especially future digital gazetteers; but
also authoring an introductory chapter which
looks at the history of gazetteers, a
surprisingly little explored topic.
Our general point is that, although
most people’s idea of a gazetteer is
simply a list of geographical names each
with some kind of coordinate and sometime
with a simple “feature type”, like
“settlement” or “mountain”, there is an
earlier history of gazetteers which
provide lengthy descriptions of each
place/feature.
We have computerised several of these
for our web site, A Vision of Britain
through Time, and are currently working on
tidying up the seven-volume "Gazetteer of the World,
or Dictionary of Geographical
Knowledge, published by
Fullarton's of Edinburgh in 1856; this
has already been digitised within Google
Books, but we are turning it into clean
database content. We estimate it
contains around 80,000 entries and 7m
words, so the average entry is a couple
of sentences, and many go on for several
pages. Similarly, this “entry” for
Edinburgh in Groome’s Ordnance
Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4)
contains over 100,000 words:
SUCH
BOOKS ARE NOT SO MUCH PLACE DICTIONARIES
AS PLACE ENCYCLOPAEDIAS. I HAVE BEEN
EXPLORING THEIR EARLY HISTORY, BUT THIS
POSTING IS TO ASK ABOUT THEIR LATER
HISTORY, AFTER 1900.
My
basic narrative at the moment is that
descriptive gazetteers, as distinct from
itineraries, first appear in the mid to
late seventeenth century, and the
lengthiest examples come from the second
half of the nineteenth century — but
they then pretty much stop — when I have
looked at the shelves of gazetteers in
various libraries I have mainly seen
books from the 19th century,
occasionally earlier.
The
exceptions seem to be:
—
There are of course lots of atlases
which also include a gazetteer at the
back (but this is about books which are
primarily text)
—
Bartholomew have kept publishing revised
editions of their Gazetteer of the
British Isles (but that has relatively
short entries, so more a place
dictionary than an encyclopaedia).
—
Various guides aimed mainly at tourists
are organised as sets of alphabetically
arranged entries about places, with
descriptions; for example, various Shell
Guides. However, map libraries are less
likely to hold these.
IS
THIS A FAIR NARRATIVE? WHAT HAPPENED TO
THE BIG DESCRIPTIVE GAZETTEERS AFTER
1900?
One
suggestion is that they were supplanted
by broader encyclopaedias, a substantial
fraction of whose headwords are
typically toponyms. I have sometimes
suggested that the world’s biggest and
most widely used digital gazetteer is
now Wikipedia; I once sampled 100
randomly selected Wikipedia articles,
and about 30% had an associated global
coordinate.
I
WOULD BE VERY GRATEFUL FOR ANY THOUGHTS
ANYONE HAS. I continue to find it
bizarre that so much has been written
about the history of maps and so little
about the history of gazetteers and
itineraries.
With
thanks,
Humphrey
Southall
Reader
in Geography/
Director, GB
Historical GIS
University of
Portsmouth
Geography Dept,
Buckingham Bldg,
Lion Terrace,
Portsmouth PO1 3HE, UK