Geographies of gazetteers in Great Britain

Gazetteers are playing a central role in the current data revolution as key tools to link content to geographical space. However, their geographies and idiosyncrasies are poorly understood despite their potential to worsen application outcomes and information inequalities. In this study, we analyze two open gazetteers, GeoNames and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, in terms of the quantity and spatial distribution of features in Great Britain, illustrating how they provide a different and inconsistent picture of the region and are still far less detailed than the institutional gazetteers curated by Ordnance Survey