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

Mon Apr 13 15:31:26 CEST 2015

Hi Steve

I don’t expect you’ll find any clear answer on this.
I would suggest using "Autauga County", "Acadia Parish” etc. as they do on the listing of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_counties_and_county_equivalents

Cheers,
Tim

On 13 Apr 2015, at 15:23, Steve Baskauf <steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:

> Dag,
> 
> >From the RDF standpoint, I would have a value for dwciri:inDescribedPlace ofhttp://sws.geonames.org/5666648/ .  However, in the generic, non-RDF record, I'm interested in providing a literal value for dwc:county as well.  So that's why I'm interested in knowing what the conventional or recommended practice is.  Maybe this boils down to a GBIF question.  What would GBIF want?
> 
> Steve
> 
> Dag Endresen wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Steve
>> 
>> Geonames seems to be using gn:name="Missoula County"
>> http://sws.geonames.org/5666648/about.rdf
>> http://www.geonames.org/5666648/missoula-county.html
>> 
>> Could something along the lines of
>> dwciri:county=""http://sws.geonames.org/5666648/" perhaps be useful?
>> 
>> Regards
>> Dag
>> 
>> On 13 April 2015 at 01:12, Steve Baskauf <steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
>>   
>>> 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>
>>> 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:
>>>> 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
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> tdwg-content mailing list
>>>> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
>>>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
>>>>       
>>> --
>>> 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
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> tdwg-content mailing list
>>> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
>>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
>>> 
>>>     
>> 
>> 
>>   
> 
> -- 
> 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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> tdwg-content mailing list
> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/attachments/20150413/ebfc7f7e/attachment.html 