[Rockhounds] seeking info on official political locality data

[Ted Kowalski]

My apologies Don:
I have been ignoring this thread since I originally surmised your original
request to be political boundary names. As I've mentioned before, I come
from a Postal background and while USPS would seem to be a source of place
names, USPS addresses do not follow political boundaries lower than State
level (and even at State level USPS has exceptions). 

However, I read in your "Thanks note" a desire for geographical place names,
not necessarily political. Well now, that's a horse of a different color;
(to me at least and I get to use a favorite line from the Wizard of Oz).

OK; for geo names we turn to the USGS. Here are some possibilities.
The download site for domestic names:
http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/download_data.htm
(it's only 62mb)

Place to start looking for outside of the US names:
http://geonames.usgs.gov/foreign/index.html

Enjoy!
Ted

-----Original Message-----
From: rockhounds-bounces at lists.drizzle.com
[mailto:rockhounds-bounces at lists.drizzle.com] On Behalf Of DonH
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 4:57 PM
To: Rockhounds at drizzle.com: A mailing list for rock and gem collectors
Subject: Re: [Rockhounds] seeking info on official political locality data

J Bryan Kramer wrote:

> This might be a good starting point:
> 
> <http://geonames.usgs.gov/index.html>
> 

Thanks guys for all the answers.  This helps a lot.  Somewhere I thought 
there was a breakdown of administrative divisons by order... in other 
words, a U.S. state is a "1st order division" (i.e., one level down from 
"country") and I'd imagine a German state is the same; but I'm not sure 
whether a Swiss canton or a Japanese praefecture is 1st or 2nd, etc.

The reason this matters is that I need to provide a database that 
catalogs all my samples (and this will be much simpler than the 
collection management database that Tommy and I developed a few years 
ago) and I am striving to keep the locality fields in line with standard 
nomenclature.

Thanks,
Don


-- 
_______________________________________________
Rockhounds at drizzle Mailing List
Subscription Services:
http://lists.drizzle.com/mailman/listinfo/rockhounds
List Home Page, with a link to the List Usage Policy:
http://www.eclecticlapidary.com/Rockhounds/index.html