“Creating a Multi-Script Russian Language Gazetteer”
Eileen Llona, University of Washington

Users of Russian geographic information, such as topographic maps, online databases, or the Central Eurasian Interactive Atlas (CEIA - an online resource which is part of the Central Eurasian Information Resource project developed at the University of Washington Libraries) are limited to using various transliterated, and often inconsistent, naming conventions when searching for place names. The availability of a multi-script place name tool (such as a gazetteer) that includes Cyrillic would greatly aid users when searching these and other Russian language-based resources. By utilizing location information, we will use geographic information system (GIS) and database technology to create initial matches between places and their names using geographic data compiled by the CEIA. After this initial Cyrillic/transliterated data set is compiled, additional transliterated name variants will be incorporated using LC, ISO-9 and BGN transliterations. The structure of the resulting gazetteer will incorporate features from the Alexandria Digital Library Gazetteer Content Standard version 3.2.