World gazetteer

A world gazetteer is a world-wide geographic dictionary index; a combination atlas/almanac. It typically contains information concerning the geographic makeup of a country or region, and the social statistics, e.g. population, GDP, literacy Rate, etc. They can be found in reference sections of most libraries.

Gazetteer editors gather information from census reports and organize it in digest form. World gazetteers usually consist of an alphabetical listing of countries, with pertinent statistics for each one, with some gazetteers listing information on cities of varying sizes. Gazetteers are not limited to describing political features; they can also describe any geographical features such as mountains, waterways, or roads.

A world gazetteer is distinguished from other gazetteers by virtue of its inclusion of the entire world, instead of centering on the statistics of one location. World gazetteers usually offer less detail on each location than other gazetteers.

Worldwide

Examples of electronic world gazetteers can be found at:

• • for a given city it gives the country, province, population, coordinates, population rank among all towns within the country
  • for each country it gives a map and table of provinces with area and population, a map of cities, an alphabetical table of cities, and a table of top cities
  • for each province it gives an alphabetical table of cities.

• – contains 2,900,000 towns outside the US (more than the other two gazetteers) (broken link? 2004-04-06; the data do not seem to be free anymore )
  • for a given country and town it gives coordinates, altitude, weather forecast, and a map showing the position of the town with respect to topography and borders and bodies of water (not with respect to other towns); it also lists towns which are very nearby, within 3 km, with direction.

• • for a given city it gives a map showing the position of the town with respect to some other cities, borders and bodies of water.

• The Alexandria Digital Library at UCSB
  • http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/
  • http://fat-albert.alexandria.ucsb.edu:8827/gazetteer/
    • allows searching for any or a specified type of geographical feature within a rectangular area or the whole world, with a name equal to or containing the search term; returns coordinates, country and province with a small scale map.

• The Getty Thesaurus of Geographical names
  • http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/tgn/
  • Similar to the previous one, except that not a rectangular area but a country can be specified, and that no map is produced.

• The CIA World Factbook
  • http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
  • Compiled by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, this reference includes country-level data on all countries recognized by the United States. The World Fact Book gives information for each country on geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues.

• http://www.statoids.com/statoids.html

US only

• HomeTownLocator Gazetteer - US physical and cultural features, Census 2000 data
  • http://Gazetteer.HomeTownLocator.com/
• The U.S. Gazetteer (1990 Census)
  • http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer
• American FactFinder
  • http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsServlet
  • - from

Canada only

• Gazetteers of Canada (English-language)
  • http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/search/advanced_findaplace_search_form?show=link
  • http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/index_e.php
  • - from