MARC 21

Ghana Place Names has been allocated a 'Cartographic Data Source Code' by the Network Development & MARC Standards Office of the U.S.Library of Congress in Technical Notice 140130.

For further information about MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging), see:

The code for Ghana Place Names is ghpn.

Sources and procedures by which GPN locates places

  1. Wherever possible, places are first located on maps which use the Survey of Ghana (or the former Gold Coast Survey Department) as their primary source. This includes the U.S.Army Map Service, 1:250,000 (1954), the Shell Road Map of Ghana, 1:500,000 (1962), the SoG map of Ghana, 1:400,000 (1967), and the SoG sheet maps with various scales ranging from 1:250,000 to 1:50,000.

  2. In cases of uncertainty, other maps are used, which may have more up-to-date spellings of the place names, such as the Ghana Statistical Survey (GSS) maps (see District links on the Regions page).

  3. A match is then made with a name from either IndexMundi or the GEOnet Names Server by superimposing a marker on the 1962 map using the IM or GNS latitude & longitude. GNS data is used by default, as it is generally more accurate. In many cases the Region & District in which a place is located can be found from the Election Polling Station Registers, and some can be found also in the National Identification Authority (NIA) registers which also have geographic coordinates. For names not listed by IM or GNS, measurements or estimates are made from the available maps.

  4. IndexMundi is used to display the satellite image of the area around the place thereby located. If the place marker is not on a visible settlement, but there is a nearby visible settlement which can be seen to correspond to the place on the maps, the co-ordinates are adjusted to relocate the marker. This is indicated by the addition of an asterisk (*) at the end of the place name at the head of the IM webpage.

  5. If a place is not marked on the 1962 map, its location is stated, as a guide to the user, on the GPN toponym record, in the format "About N km XYZ of Biarakrom", where N is the nearest whole number of kilometres, XYZ is a 16-point compass bearing, and 'Biarakrom' is the name of a town visible on the 1962 map square linked on the record. This is computed using great-circle navigation formulae.