-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Re: Chinese urban names in authority file
Date:   Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:17:20 -0400
From:   Paige Andrew <[log in to unmask]>
To:     Maps, Air Photo & Geospatial Systems Forum <[log in to unmask]>




Chris,

I'm not replying with any expertise in this matter, just an observation
that these distinctions should be maintained in my opinion. Perhaps the
parallel is what we deal with in the U.S. with Towns and Townships
versus cities; or in Germany with cities versus Kreis' and other various
administrative regions? Of the authority records you have seen who has
created them? If all or the majority of them were created by DLC then it
would probably be wise to inquire about the details with folks in LC
G&M. Just some thoughts on this....

Paige

At 09:02 AM 8/23/2007, you wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject:        Chinese urban names in authority file
> Date:   Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:44:08 -0500 (CDT)
> From:   Christopher Winters <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To:       [log in to unmask]
> To:     [log in to unmask]
>
> I'd be very grateful to find out exactly what
> the rational is for the way Chinese city names
> appear in the authority file.
>
> Sometimes there's a distinction between cities
> (populated places) and administrative units (shi)
> and sometimes not. That is, there's both Hangzhou
> (China) and Hangzhou Shi (China). Wuhan and
> Guangzhou work the same way, and there's also a
> variant distinction between Chengdu (China) and
> Chengdu Shi (China : Municipality).
>
> But Chongqing, perhaps the world's most spectacularly
> overbounded city, is (if I've understood right) always
> Chongqing (China), no matter what the focus of the work.
> The other province-equivalent cities Beijing, Shanghai,
> and Tianjin work the same way.
>
> However, numerous cities (Fuzhou Shi, Shenzhen Shi)
> seem always to have the "Shi." These tend to be smaller,
> but some people say Shenzhen has 10 million people.
>
> Is this a question (as I suspect) partly of size
> and partly of cataloging tradition? But do many
> catalogers really try to make a distinction, say,
> between Hangzhou (China) and Hangzhou Shi (China),
> and, if so, what exactly is the distinction in an
> era when cities do not end at walls or at political
> boundaries?
>
> I'd be very grateful for any enlightenment here.
>
> Chris Winters
> University of Chicago Library