Columbia Gazetteer of the World Online

The definition of the term Gazetteer, when used in a geographical sense, is a "geographical index or dictionary." The comprehensive gazetteer, however, is an encyclopedia of geographical places and features. The Columbia Gazetteer of the World is such an encyclopedia. The Columbia Gazetteer of the World is more than an geographical index or dictionary to maps. The 1998 Gazetteer had 163,000 entries. This revised edition adds some 7,000 new ones, with many revisions to existing entries. The information contained therein constitutes a gazetteer unrivaled in scope and unmatched in authority. The entries include information on many of the following: demography; physical geography; political boundaries; industry, trade, and service activities; agriculture; cultural, historical, and archeological points of interest; transportation lines; longitude, latitude, and elevations; distance to relevant places; pronunciations; official local government place-names and changed or variant names and spellings. Their length varies from a brief notation on a small village to an essay on a country or region. - Publisher.