geobibliography

Geobibliography is the study and practice of organizing, describing, and analyzing publications and other information resources related to geography, cartography, and spatial information. It encompasses the creation of bibliographies, catalogs, indexes, and metadata for geographic literature, including scholarly articles, monographs, maps, atlases, gazetteers, and geospatial data resources.

The field sits at the intersection of information science and geography and often overlaps with cartography and GIS. It addresses both literature about geographic topics and geographic materials themselves, such as historical maps and digitized spatial datasets, with the aim of improving discovery, access, and evaluation.

Historically, geobibliography developed within library and information science as geography-specific catalogs and subject bibliographies to aid researchers. With digitization, it has broadened to digital libraries, online catalogs, and interoperable metadata standards that facilitate searching across geospatial resources.

Key methods include bibliographic description using cataloging rules, such as MARC and Resource Description and Access, and metadata standards like Dublin Core, ISO 19115, ISO 19139, and FGDC. The use of geographic subject headings and controlled vocabularies enhances retrieval, and bibliometric techniques may analyze trends and impact within geographic publications.

Applications of geobibliography include supporting researchers in geography, cartography, and spatial data; assisting libraries with collection development; and enabling integrated search across bibliographic databases and GIS repositories.