The Columbia Gazetteer of the World is a new resource in the library's Reference Collection. This three volume geographical encyclopedia offers pronunciation, population, descriptions, coordinates, crops, and other resources for places.
Coverage is for political and physical regions to special places like national parks.
Since the last edition of the gazetteer was printed in 1952, the United Nations membership went from 51 to 183 in 1997, and the world population exploded from an estimated 2.55 billion in 1950 to 5.8 billion in 1996. Consequently, this new edition of the gazetteer contains 30,000 new entries, with the remaining entries substantially enhanced as well.