GAZETTEER FILE BORN AT DUKE thanks to Stuart Basefsky

DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
Vol. 1, No. 2 Winter, 1988  [?]

https://archive.org/stream/dukeuniversityli01ezze/dukeuniversityli01ezze_djvu.txt

Reported by Carolyn Myers and

Ashley Jackson 

GAZETTEER FILE

BORN AT DUKE

Thanks to a bright idea from

Stuart Basefsky, Documents

Reference and Maps Librarian, it's

now much easier to find the exact

location of towns and other

places in foreign countries.

Basefsky convinced the

Congressional Information

Service, a Maryland publisher, to

issue on microfiche the complete

file of foreign gazetteers produced

by the Defense Mapping Agency.

Although the 1,400 depository

libraries, of which Duke is one,

should have received all the

printed gazetteers issued by the

DMA, gaps did exist since the

distribution system was not

perfect. Duke, for instance, was

missing gazetteers from South

Africa, Canada, and the

Philippines — countries much in

the news of late. Even with its

incompleteness. Duke's printed

collection took up twenty linear

feet of space.

The microfiche collection, by

contrast, requires only fifteen

inches of drawer space. Another

benefit is the lower cost of the

microfiche collection — $3,000

as opposed to approximately

$14,000 for the collection in

hardcopy. Each volume of the

collection includes approved

name and unapproved variant

names of places, a description of

the place or feature (e.g.,

populated place, forest), country

in which the place is located,

latitude and longitude, and other

finding aids.

Because of Basefsky 's role in

the project, he received credit in

the publication for being an

informal consultant. Duke

received thanks for lending many

of its gazetteers to be filmed. The

Library also received a free copy

of the microfiche collection,

entitled Foreign Gazetteers of the

U.S. Board on Geographic Names.