[DCRM-L] Encoding coordinates in VRA, DC, or MARC for non-map materials

[Sarah Horowitz]

​I am posting this on behalf of a colleague. Please direct your replies to
her at lallen at haverford.edu. Please excuse cross-posting.

Hi,

I'm curious to find people who are encoding coordinates (or standardized
addresses) in library records for non-map materials.

I know that there are spaces within Dublin Core (
http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-point/), MARC (255 or 034) and VRA
Core for including coordinates, but I haven't found examples of catalogers
who are routinely specifying either geographic coordinates or standardized
addresses for non-map materials.

A few examples:
1) A book describing the history of a particular building or intersection
2) A lithograph of a 19th century street scene
3) A photograph of a person in front of a recognizable building
3) A manuscript collection related to the history of a particular place.

Some context: I've recently worked with students and "hacktivists" on
pulling data out of library systems and exploring those data through
various data visualization tools. We've found that the geographic data in
many of the records is often either not included, or not
standardized so that a lot of data cleaning needs to be done in order to
map the contents. However, in many cases, an addresses or other standard
geographic information is included in plain text notes field.

A collection of Philadelphia librarians and archives would like to learn
from someone who has already established best practices for
coordinate-level or address level encoding of places.

Thanks.
Laurie

--
Laurie Allen
Coordinator for Digital Scholarship and Services
Haverford College Library
370 Lancaster Ave
Haverford, PA 19041
610-896-4226

-- 
Sarah Horowitz
Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts
Head of Special Collections
Haverford College Libraries
Haverford College
370 Lancaster Ave.
Haverford, PA 19041
(610) 896-2948
shorowitz at haverford.edu
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