[tdwg-content] Clarification about values for dwc:county

[Steve Baskauf]

Yes, I agree.  It probably is a usage issue.  If there is a mixture of 
usage with some people reporting it one way ("Missoula") and others 
reporting it the other way ("Missoula County"), then I would probably 
include the " County" part.  However, if nearly everyone omits the last 
part, then I don't want to expose DwC data that doesn't play well with 
what is conventional, and I would omit the last part.

Steve

Bob Morris wrote:
>
> This may be a usage issue not a definition issue. For example if you 
> search for the form of notarized signature in u.s. states, you will 
> probably conclude that most or all states require a form County of 
> _______________. In turn this and its sisters may be derived from the 
> Uniform Commercial Code.  But other legal docs may have different 
> conventions.  One could wish that a best practice would be to follow 
> local practice for legal names of such named entities as counties.  
> But my guess is that in the U.S. this is full of huge state to state 
> variation arising from historical events, especially colonial ones.
> Bob
>
> On Apr 12, 2015 10:35 AM, "Steve Baskauf" 
> <steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu <mailto:steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu>> 
> wrote:
>
>     The definition of dwc:county is: "The full, unabbreviated name of the
>     next smaller administrative region than stateProvince (county, shire,
>     department, etc.) in which the Location occurs."  What I'm wondering
>     about is whether the "full" name includes the second part to the
>     name as
>     it's typically written in the U.S. and Canada.  "Missoula" is given as
>     an example.  However, the full name of that county in Montana is
>     actually "Missoula County".  If there were consistency in second parts
>     of county names, one could just assume that one adds " County"
>     after the
>     value given for dwc:county.  However, there isn't consistency.  In
>     Louisiana, it's "Washington Parish".  In Alaska, names usually end
>     with
>     "Borough" (e.g. "Denali Borough"), although sometimes they don't (e.g.
>     "Dillingham Census Area").  Outside the U.S. and Canada, there may
>     be no
>     second part to the name, or it might be something completely
>     different.
>
>     I am having a problem with this when I try to display values of
>     dwc:county on a web page.  Currently I have some rules that involve
>     examining the country and the value of dwc:stateProvince to decide
>     what
>     to append after the first part of the name. But they don't work for
>     Alaska and if I just said "Dillingham, Alaska" that would really be
>     wrong if I meant the Dillingham Census Area and not the city of
>     Dillingham.  It would be easier to display them if the second part of
>     the name were included in the value.
>
>     Is there a convention on this?  I was assuming that it would be to
>     omit
>     the second part of the name, but since the definition says "full,
>     unabbreviated name", I'm not sure.
>
>     Steve
>
>     --
>     Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
>     Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
>
>     postal mail address:
>     PMB 351634
>     Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.
>
>     delivery address:
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>     1161 21st Ave., S.
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>
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>
>
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-- 
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences

postal mail address:
PMB 351634
Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.

delivery address:
2125 Stevenson Center
1161 21st Ave., S.
Nashville, TN 37235

office: 2128 Stevenson Center
phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 322-4942
If you fax, please phone or email so that I will know to look for it.
http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
http://vanderbilt.edu/trees


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