Organising your records by geographic places?

The Clearinghouse at Women’s Health Victoria (WHV) has constructed and is maintaining a simple Geographic Thesaurus using Inmagic Text Works.

Using the controlled vocabulary for places in their thesaurus, WHV are adding keywords to indicate geographic coverage. Searching the Clearinghouse collection for material limited by geographic area will be simple.

Geographic terms are included for:

– Continents – eg: Asia

– Other regions which span continents – eg: Middle East, Pacific Region

– Countries

– States and Territories of Australia

– State capitals for Australia

– Victorian regions – aligned with Department of Health Regions (map provided) with scope notes as to which LGAs fall into each region

– Any other important place names are to be specified within the abstract

– When indexing, we can also add the terms ‘Rural areas’ or ‘Urban areas” from the subject thesaurus as relevant

This model “is working REALLY well for us“. WHV has generously offered that they have no copyright issues and are happy to share this.

If you would like a copy of the Australian geographic thesaurus, please
contact Women’s Health Victorian Clearinghouse – email: clearinghouse@whv.org.au or Maxus Australia by email or phone (03) 9646 1988.