FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Gazetteers

Gazetteers Project for Emerging and Maturing Homelands
Project Leader: Danielle Examples: Angola Gazetteers page example Iran Gazetteers page example Malta Gazetteers page example Moldova Gazetteers page example Purpose: To update/standardize the gazetteers pages for each country. You will use a lot of your best judgement to make these pages better. Some of these pages won't have much information and some may have an incredible amount of information. Therefore, we may have to modify the template in the future. Please reach out anytime you have questions or have difficulties knowing where to place information.

Task List
Task list

Part 1: Choose a Country and Prepare a Sandbox
Step 1: Go to the task list and choose a country from the Emerging Homelands and Caribbean 2022 tab by putting your name by it. Step 2: Create a sandbox for this page putting the name of the country in the title for you to easily find it again. Step 3: Copy the URL for the new Sandbox page and go back to the task list and add the url to Column F. Step 4: Copy and paste the code below into your sandbox:

Online Gazetteers

 * [URL FamilySearch Places]
 * World Gazetteers at Archive.org

Why Use Gazetteers
A gazetteer is a dictionary of place-names. Gazetteers list or describe towns and villages, parishes, states, populations, rivers and mountains, and other geographical features. They usually include only the names of places that existed at the time the gazetteer was published. Within a specific geographical area, the place-names are listed in alphabetical order, similar to a dictionary. You can use a gazetteer to locate the places where your family lived and to determine the civil and religious jurisdictions over those places.

There are many places within a country with similar or identical place-names. You will need to use a gazetteer to identify the specific town where your ancestor lived, the state the town was or is in, and the jurisdictions where records about the person was kept.

Gazetteer Contents
Gazetteers may also provide additional information about towns, such as:


 * Different religious denominations
 * Schools, colleges, and universities
 * Major manufacturers, canals, docks, and railroad stations
 * The population size.
 * Boundaries of civil jurisdiction.
 * Ecclesiastical jurisdiction(s)
 * Longitude and latitude.
 * Distances and direction from other from cities.
 * Schools, colleges, and universities.
 * Denominations and number of churches.
 * Historical and biographical information on some individuals (usually high-ranking or famous individuals)

Step 5: Replace COUNTRY with the name of your country. (This will create the country sidebar template and breadcrumb.)

Part 2: Check Resources on the Existing Page
Step 1. Go to the existing gazetteers page for the country. If there isn't one, go to Part 3. Step 2. Click on each link. Any broken links don't need to be added to your sandbox. Step 3. Copy any links that assist with understanding the geography or jurisdictions of your country into your sandbox under the "online gazetteers" or "print only gazetteers" depending on the type of resource.

Part 3: Find online and print only gazetteers
'''When you search, you might have to search by a country's colonial or alternative name. Also, try finding gazetteers by searching the country's continent.'''

Part 3A: Add FamilySearch Places Link
Step 1. Go to FamilySearch Places and search for your country. Step 2. Select the search result you want. Step 3. Copy the URL for the search result you selected in step 2. Step 4. In your sandbox, find the "online gazetteers" heading and then the code for FamilySearch Places. See example below for the code. *[URL FamilySearch Places] Step 5. Replace "URL" with the URL you copied in step 3.

Part 3B: Search the FamilySearch Catalog
Step 1. Go to the FamilySearch Catalog. Step 2. Do a place name search for your country and find the gazetteers in the search results. Step 3. Review the search results and decide which heading they go under. For example, books and microfilm go under the "print only..." heading. Anything digitized go under the "online..." heading. Step 4. Copy the code below into your sandbox. *[URL BOOK TITLE] AUTHOR, PUBLISHER INFORMATION, YEAR Step 5. Add the URL from the catalog and then the title, book, author, publisher informaton and publication year from the catalog entry.

Part 3C: Search Archive.org
Step 1. Go to Archive.org. Step 2. Search for your country's (or territory's) name with the work gazetteer Step 3. When you find a helpful gazetteer in the search results, click on it to open the entry for it. Step 4. Copy the code below into your sandbox to add the gazetteer entry. *[URL BOOK TITLE] AUTHOR, PUBLISHER INFORMATION, YEAR Step 5. Go back to the archive.org page you opened in step 3 and Copy the URL for that page. Step 6.Return to your sandbox and add the information about the item you selected from Archive.org. Step 10: Go to this website. Add country in the search bar. *[URL BOOK TITLE] AUTHOR, PUBLISHER INFORMATION, YEAR

Part 3D: Try the National Archive
Step 1. Use Wikipedia's list of national archives to find the archive for your country. Step 2. Search the archive for gazetteers. You might have to translate "gazetteer" into that nation's language. Step 3. Use the code belwo to add gazetteers from the archive. *[URL BOOK TITLE] AUTHOR, PUBLISHER INFORMATION, YEAR

Part 3E: Search Google for Gazetteers
Step 1. Google Search for the name of your country and online gazetteers. (Avoid gazetteers that aren't helpful like animal or weather gazetteers. A Wikipedia list of places might be helpful.) Step 2: Use the code below to add gazetteers you find: *[URL TITLE] at WEBSITE NAME Step 3. Replace all elements in all caps in the code above.

Part 4: Check Your Work and Save
Step 1. Select show preview. Step 2. Double-check the page to make sure it looks alright. Make sure that the links under Online Gazetteers are actually digitally available online. All other sources should be under Print Only Gazetteers. Step 3. Click save. Step 4. Go back to the task list and add the finished date and the link to the page you created in your sandbox.