Cahill, Colleen <cstu@...> writes:

>
>
>
> Have not done this in MODS, but in our bibliographic records we do this as
662 $b District of Columbia $d Washington, with $b being "First-order political
jurisdiction" and $d being "City".  This is from the MARC 21 Format for
Bibliographic Data.
>
>  
> Colleen
> Colleen R. Cahill
> Digital Conversion Coordinator
>   & Recommending Officer of Fantasy and Science Fiction
> Geography & Map Division
> Library of Congress
> 101 Independence Ave, SE
> Washington, DC 20540-4650
> 202-707-8540
> cstu <at> loc.gov
>  
>
>  
>
> From: Metadata Object Description Schema List [MODS-
[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Elizabeth McKelvey
[[log in to unmask]]Sent: Monday, September 27,
2010 10:45 AMTo: [log in to unmask]: [MODS]
Expressing Washington, DC
>
>
>
>
> Hi,
>  
> Any suggestions on expressing Washington, DC in mods:hierarchicalGeographic?
>  
> We are doing a project to describe early American land records.
>  
> In most cases we are dealing with a state, so we do the following:
>            
> <mods:subject>
>                         <mods:hierarchicalGeographic>
>                                     <mods:state>Massachusetts</mods:state>
>                                     <mods:city>Boston</mods:city>
>                         </mods:hierarchicalGeographic>
>             </mods:subject>
>  
> In the TGN, District of Columbia is labeled as a “national district.”  And
MARC has:
> $b - First-order political jurisdiction (NR)
> $c - Intermediate political jurisdiction (R)
> which would work.
>  
> So, any thoughts on how to do Washington, DC in MODS?
>  
> Thanks,
>  
> Betsy
>  
>  
> Betsy McKelvey
> Digital Collections Librarian
> 617-552-1989
>  
>
>
>
>

Hi Betsy and everyone,

I see that I'm stumbling across this exchange a year long after it occurred, but
I was hoping to find out what solution you eventually settled on.

We are in a similar situation - we are using TGN and hierarchicalGeographic to
describe place names that will eventually appear in a discovery system that will
facet on State. We have about 100 instances where the geographic subject is
Washington, D.C., and we are having trouble deciding where to put "District of
Columbia."

From a discovery standpoint, I think users expect to be able to find D.C. listed
among U.S. states (or at least aren't necessarily put off when they do). In
that respect, I'm inclined to use <state> so that users have access to these
records through the State facet. From the MODS standpoint, I'm feeling more
squeamish.

How are people treating an instance like "D.C.," which TGN calls as a national
district?

Thanks,
Liz Munson
Digital Librarian
National Agricultural Library