School atlases are characterized by the fact
that they only present the most important objects: so only the
most important places, mountains, rivers and lakes, islands, railways
and roads, countries and (physical) regions will be incorporated,
asl well as the names of these objects.
How to decide which are the most
important topographical objects whose names have to be included?
There could be objective yardsticks, such as:
| Towns and cities: |
over a specific number of
inhabitants |
| |
important administative
functions (national/regional) |
| |
important cultural functions
|
| Rivers and lakes: |
size, volume or catchment discharge
|
| Mountains: |
height
|
| Islands: |
size
|
| Roads and railways: |
connecting important towns and cities
|
| (Physical) regions: |
size and importance
|
The fact, that in school atlases there is a reduction
of the information load to the names of the most important topographic
elements, leads to a low information density. As a result the
number of names in a basic school atlas will not supersede 2 000,
in a junior school atlas 8000, in an intermediate school atlas
10 000, in a senior school atlas 25 000 and in a general world
atlas 100 000.
Irrespective of the number of topographical objects and their
names, the editor is confronted with contraints regarding content
and economy.
Content:
the content of an atlas is determined by Consumer needs.
The educational market, for example, has its specific demands
and requirements regarding the spelling (transliteration/transcription)
of foreign names.
Economy: as it would be
too expensive to take 100,000 or even 25,000 individual decisions
(regarding the spelling of all named objects in the atlas),
internal toponymic guidelines are indispensable for each atlas
publishing house.
The United
Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names has set up
toponymic
guidelines in order to help overcome the great variation in
approaches that countries have regarding the spelling of toponyms.
Although map
and atlas editors conform their choices as much as possible to
these toponymic guidelines, many decisions still remain to be
taken. In the following pages the most important ones will be
elaborated upon.
