Standardizing Place Names Means That They Often Do Not Correspond Exactly to the Imprint of Publications

Inexplicably, in February 2018 I first reviewed the Place of Publication database and standardized place names. Up to this time the place names were a combination of foreign language or Latin names and their English language equivalent, such as Milan and Milano. To make searching by place name consistent I standardized the names to their English language version, when appropriate, and because some of the city names may be repeated in various U.S. states or countries (Birmingham, AL or Birmingham, England), I added U.S. state abbreviations to all U.S. places, except the most obvious, such as New York, and country names to cities in any countries where I thought it would be helpful to users searching the database by this method. Because these versions of place names are included in the bibliographical entries as they appear in this online database they often do not correspond precisely to the place names on the imprints of publications.