Place information
When searching Trove, researchers can use the ‘Place’ search facet to narrow their search to content related to a particular Australian state or territory, or material of national or international relevance.
The Trove Partner Dashboard also offers insights into collections, based on Place.
This page is aimed at information professionals in Libraries, Galleries, Archives, Museums, Universities and community organisations, who are getting their data ready to send to Trove.
Why include this information in your records?
Including place data in your records will help people narrow down their searches to material about a specific area of interest.
What places are included?
Place focuses on material held in Australian collections, which specialise in Australia and our region including Indonesia, New Zealand, the Pacific and Timor-Leste. The possible values are:
Australia
- Australian Capital Territory
- New South Wales
- Northern Territory
- Queensland
- South Australia
- Tasmania
- Victoria
- Western Australia
- National
- Offshore Territories
Antarctica
International
Indonesia
- New Zealand
- Pacific
- Timor-Leste
- Other
How to put Place information into your records
Geographic Area Code
For information professionals, the ‘Place’ facet is driven by data in the Geographic Area Code field. It should contain information on the place the resource describes, not necessarily the place the resource was published. For example, a book about South Australia, published in London, should be coded as South Australia.
For a Dublin Core record, enter this information in a spatial field, ensuring you reference the Library of Congress geographicAreas vocabulary.
Eg. <dc:spatial scheme="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/geographicAreas">u-at</dc:spatial>
For a MARC record, enter this information in the 043 $a subfield, using the MARC Code for List for Geographic Areas.
Eg. 043 ##$au-at---
The Library of Congress has more information on their website: https://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd043.html
For more detailed information on the codes Trove will accept, see the Trove Data Dictionary.
Place of Publication
Trove also accepts information on the place of publication. This is not exposed to the public in a search facet, but is shown in the Place report in the Trove Partners Dashboard. For those interested in data analysis, the place of publication can be accessed via the index named ‘placeOfPublication’. This is where you should enter information on where the item was published. For example a book about South Australia, published in London, should be coded as United Kingdom.
For a Dublin Core record, place of publication can be entered in the DC Terms field bibliographicCitation, with a type of ‘placeOfPub’ and a scheme referencing the Library of Congress Countries scheme.
Eg. <dcterms:bibliographicCitation type="placeOfPub" scheme="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/countries">at</dcterms:bibliographicCitation>
For a MARC record the information should be entered in the 008/15-17.
The Library of Congress has more information on the use of 008/15-17 on their website: https://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd008a.html
And you can find the MARC code list of countries at: https://www.loc.gov/marc/countries/
For more detailed information on the codes Trove will accept, see the Trove Data Dictionary.
Why Library of Congress? Why don’t you use ISO codes?
Trove contains millions of items, collected and described over centuries by the hard work of information professionals. Trove is rapidly expanding to include more content from museums, galleries and archives, yet the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD) is still the biggest contributor – a collective effort of more than 1,000 libraries. The standard used by these libraries is the Library of Congress MARC codes. While the ISO standard is a close match, there are differences in how they classify some countries and regions (for example, Norfolk Island). Trove has therefore followed the bulk of its Partners (and items) and uses the Library of Congress codes.
If you are a Partner and can only contribute ISO codes, contact Trove Partner Support and they will setup a special process to add Library of Congress codes as your records come into Trove.