Geographical research and the problem of variant place names in digitized books and other full-text resources

Geographical research often involves searching for place names in full-text resources, such as digitized books. Place names often have variants, resulting in many different names for a single geographical place, a problem that can lead to missed results in full-text searches for place names. The problem occurs because full-text search engines merely match words in the search box with words in online documents, leaving place–name variants unsearched. This paper describes how relevant resources can be missed due to this problem and describes the different sources of place–name variation. Finally, the paper describes some solutions to the place–name variation problem in full-text searching.