Coverage Field

Field name: Your choice (default = "Coverage")

DC Element: Coverage

A separate field to represent the spatial or temporal aspects of the content of the resource. (These aspects could also be included in Subject field, but if you want to represent these aspects in separate fields, you should map them to DC Coverage.)

The Coverage field typically contains a spatial location (a place name or geographic coordinates) or a temporal period (a named historical period, a date, or a date range).

N.B.: Not every geographic name or date belongs in a Coverage field! If a place name is the location of a publisher, it should go into a DC Publisher field. If the date refers to the date a resource was created it should go into a DC Date field. Coverage refers only to the subject content of the resource. For instance, a poster published in London (DC Publisher) in 1934 (DC Date) depicts a medieval (DC Coverage) church in York, England (DC Coverage).

Examples of field names:

  • Location Depicted
  • Geographic Subject
  • Site Location
  • Historical period
  • Building location
  • Date of construction

Examples of data:

  • United States--Washington (State)--Seattle
  • Pumice Plain (in Mt. St. Helens collection)
  • Old Kingdom, ca 2686-ca 2181 B.C.
  • 1925-1946

Recommended format:

  • Country--State or Province--City (for geographic locations)

Recommended controlled vocabulary:

For locations:

  • Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): List maintained by LC and other libraries. This is a large file that contains many geographic headings. It is also the authority file used by the UW Libraries Catalog and many UW Libraries digital projects. You can find LCSH terms in the Library of Congress Authorities by doing a Subject Authority Heading search. The UW Libraries digital projects have used a format different from normal LCSH format for geographic locations to improve keyword access. We have used a Country--State or Province--City hierarchical format, but the names used in each part of the hierarchy are taken from LCSH.
  • Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN): "The TGN is a structured vocabulary containing around 1,000,000 names and other information about places. The TGN includes all continents and nations of the modern political world, as well as historical places. It includes physical features and administrative entities, such as cities and nations. The emphasis in TGN is on places important for art and architecture."
  • GEOnet Names Server: This database is maintained by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (US BGN). The database contains names for 3.5 million geographic features (countries, cities, rivers, mountains, etc.) The coverage is worldwide, excluding the United States and Antarctica. For geographic names in the U.S. and Antarctica go to the U.S. Geographical Survey's Geographical Names Information System which contains almost 2 million geographic feature names.