We have a New Gazeteer for Geographic, Historical, and Cultural Information

Olympic College Libraries have just acquired a subscription to the Columbia Gazeteer of the World. This is a comprehensive encyclopedia of geographical places and features. The entries vary from a brief notation on a small village to an essay on a country or region and can include information on demography; physical geography; political boundaries; agriculture; cultural, historical, and archeological points of interest; transportation lines; longitude, latitude, and elevations; and official local government place-names.

Many entries will have direct relevance for OC students. One example is the entry on Botswana where the entry discusses the San people. This will be useful to OC's Anthropology students. Here are snippets of the entry on Botswana to give you an idea of the kinds of information in this Gazeteer:

"Botswana (bots−WAH−nah), republic (□ 231,804 sq mi/600,372 sq km; 2004 estimated population 1,561,973; 2007 estimated population 1,815,508), S central Africa; • Gaborone. Bordered N by Zambia at a narrow strip, N and W by Namibia, E by Zimbabwe, and E and S by South Africa. ... [more]

Geography
The terrain is mostly an arid plateau (c.3,000 ft/910 m high); in the E are hills. The Kalahari Desert lies in the S and W.

History to 1900
San (Bushmen) were the aboriginal inhabitants of what is now Botswana, but they were supplanted by the Tswana, and they constitute only a small portion of the population today. Beginning in the 1820s, the region was disrupted by the expansion of the Zulu and their offshoot, the Ndebele. ... [more]

People
The country’s people are known as Batswana, which is also the name of the largest tribe (constituting 50% of the total population); other groups living here include the Bakalanga, Bakalagari, Bayei, Basubiya, Hambukushu, Khoi, Ovaherero, San, and a small number of Europeans. ... [more]