HelpAcknowledgments
The task to compile a glossary of geographical terminology for use by the Department of Geography of the University of South Africa (Unisa) commenced in 2011. At that stage, Dr Sux Zietsman (a retired staff member of the department) was appointed to develop a glossary of geographical terminology, based on terms used in the undergraduate modules being taught in the department. The task was completed at the end of 2013, and the department started to use this glossary in 2014 as mechanism to support students with their understanding of the content of the modules being taught. It was a document based glossary, and was uploaded as an additional resource on the websites of all modules taught by the Department of Geography on myUnisa (the learning management system of the university on the internet). This original glossary as developed by Dr Zietsman was available in English and Afrikaans, and constitutes two-thirds of the terms which have been included in the current interactive electronic version of the glossary. The comprehensive contribution by Dr Zietsman to the development of the original Geography glossary is hereby acknowledged.
A further development occurred from 2018 onwards, with the translation of the Geography glossary into isiZulu and Sesotho sa Leboa (also known as Northern Sotho) by staff members of the Language Services department of Unisa. These translated versions of the glossary were finally ready for use in 2020, and were added to the existing English and Afrikaans Geography glossaries on myUnisa, where they are available for Geography students to use. Since the document based glossaries are cumbersome to use, the need to have the glossary available in an interactive format on a freely accessible electronic platform, was subsequently identified in 2018. As a result Dr Gideon Kotzé was appointed on a contract in 2020, with the task to convert the document based Geography glossary to an interactive electronic format, so that students would be able to engage with it in an easier, quicker and more flexible way than with glossaries which are document based. The hope is that students will be more inclined to use the electronic version of the Geography glossary than would be the case with the document based version.
At the stage that the work to convert the glossary of geographical terminology to an interactive electronic format commenced, two additional developments lead to the glossary to be expanded to its current total of 300 terms.
The first development to mention and acknowledge, is the contribution by the Department of Ornamental Horticulture at Unisa. This department developed a comprehensive glossary of roundabout 800 terms for the modules they offer, and gave the Department of Geography permission to use it as well. A total of 44 terms and their explanations were subsequently extracted from the Ornamental Horticulture glossary, and were merged into the Geography glossary.
The second development to mention and acknowledge, is the contribution by Paul Bolstad, author of GIS Fundamentals: A First Text on Geographic Information Systems, Fifth Edition, Eider Press (2016), who provided permission for the extraction of a selection of GIS terms and their definitions, descriptions or explanations from the latter book, and to include it in the interactive electronic version of the Geography glossary.
Sources consulted with the compilation of the Geography glossary
References to the literature have deliberately been omitted from the definitions, descriptions or explanations of the terms in the online Geography glossary in order to avoid cluttering and to make the text readable. A list of some of the sources consulted during the development of the glossary is provided in the following list, which includes a multitude of seminal and authoritative works. Except in the case of the GIS terminology which have been extracted with permission by the author (Paul Bolstad) form the book GIS Fundamentals: A First Text on Geographic Information Systems, Fifth Edition, XanEdu (2016), no other definition, description or explanation has in its entirety been lifted from one or more sources.
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