Standard format for site data pages

Each standard site is described on a single data page that is linked from several different index pages, enabling it to be found by any of several different criteria.  On each such site data page, a standard set of plain text information elements is presented, at least to the extent that such information is available to the compiler of these pages.  The page which you are now reading presents an outline of those information elements, with descriptions, laid out in a style which approximates that used for the actual site data pages.
How you can help:
Boxes like this one appear throughout this page.  They tell more about the kind of information that could appear (but often doesn't) at various points in the site data pages.  If you can supply or correct such information for any site, please do so by using the email link on the bottom line of the page where that information belongs.
Thanks in advance!

The components of the site data page style are as follows:

Ordinary plain text is also used here for explanations about the nature of the information that will be presented on a site data page.

The information elements found on a site data page are as follows:

CITY : COUNTRY

or

CITY : CTRY - st

or

CITY - f : COUNTRY

or

CITY - f : CTRY - st

is the sitename which uniquely identifies the site being presented on the page.

A 2-letter abbreviation "st" is used to indicate the state (USA) or province (Canada) within the country.  In other countries that have many sites, a 1- or 2-letter abbreviation may be used to identify an appropriate major political subdivision.

The flag "f" is a letter code that is used to distinguish between multiple sites in the same city, and will not be present if a city has only a single site.  The flag is usually one or a few letters based on the initials of the site name (below).  However, if a single institution owns more than one site, a number is used to distinguish between them.  It is possible for a site flag to have both letters and a number, separated by a slash (e.g., "UM/1"). 

  Instrument name
This line appears only if the instrument has a specific name or dedication.  A long name may occupy more than one line.

If no name is shown, do you know there is one?
If a name is present, can you provide a more accurate version?

*Location: 

  Institution name
  Location
  City, State/Province, Country
  LL: (latitude and longitude)
This section appears on every site data page, even if the exact location of the site is unknown.  It shows the physical, civil or geographic location of the tower or other installation.  This is not a postal address, although street numbers may be used when cross-street names or similar geographic references are not available.  (The postal address of the institution is shown below under "Contact".)

If the bell tower has a name of its own, that precedes the institution's name.  If the instrument is not hung in a conventional tower, a descriptive word or phrase may be shown.  If the name of the institution has changed during the lifetime of the instrument, any former name(s) of the institution will be shown in parentheses.  If the location of the bells is not the same as their original site, then "*Former Location:" will be shown after the (present) "Location", using the same style.

The latitude is shown with N or S (for North or South); the longitude is shown with E or W (for East or West of the Greenwich meridian).  (This line does not appear on pages which were extracted from the database prior to February 2006.)  For sites in England, Scotland or Wales, an OS coordinate pair (Ordnance Survey, Landranger map series) will also appear here.

The number of lines varies depending on the complexity of the location description. The state/province may appear as a blank between two commas to emphasize that it is unknown.

For pages added or revised after January 2006, this section is normally followed by at least one custom link to an online mapping service, designed to map the location as well as possible.  Following such a link will bring up a page with an icon indicating the site's location.  A "Map Use Hints" page tells more about the differences between various map links, explains how the initial appearance of each map was chosen, and describes how you may be able to further customize some maps according to your own desires.
For pages added or revised before February 2006, any map links appear in the middle of the Links section (see below.)

Can you provide a more accurate description of where this set of bells is located?

*Player/Chimer: 

  Who is appointed to play the instrument
  Postal address
  Telephone number(s)
  E: e-mail@address
The heading of this section varies, depending on the number of bells in the instrument.  For carillons, the heading is "Player", meaning either "carillonneur" or "carillonist".  For chimes, the term "chimer" is used.  Regardless of the wording of the section header, if the player has a formal title assigned by the institution which owns the instrument, then that title is appended to the person's name.  More than one person may be listed.

The postal address does not repeat the country name, since it would not be used to send mail within the country.  See the paragraph under "Contact" (below) regarding telephone numbers.

This section does not appear when no player is known, nor for rings, automatic-action instruments or collections.

Can you provide names of other people who regularly play this instrument?
Can you provide more details of how to contact those players who are listed?
Should a person be removed from this section because of death, relocation, or other cause?

*Contact: 

  Who may be contacted about the instrument
  Postal/parcel address(es)
  Telephone number(s)
  E: e-mail@address
The contact is the owner of the instrument, or an official representative of the owner, but not any of the players (who are separately listed above).  The contact may be a person, an institution, or an office of an institution.  See the paragraphs under "Player/Chimer" (above) regarding postal addresses.  If the postal address is a postbox, then a parcel delivery address may also be shown. (In the USA, at least, parcel delivery services cannot deliver to postboxes.)

Telephone numbers do not include the international country code; they do include the area code within the country.  This is shown either by putting parentheses around the area code (the North American custom) or by placing "/" between area code and number (for the rest of the world).  Telephone numbers for individuals are designated "H:" for home and "W:" for work when that distinction is known; in all other cases they are marked "T:", except that cell phone numbers may be marked "C:".  Facsimile machine numbers are marked "F:", and may be the same as a voice number when the fax service is on-request only.  Electronic mail addresses are marked "E:".

This section may not appear if no means of contacting the owning institution nor any locally knowledgeable person is known.

Can you provide more accurate or complete contact information?

*Schedule: 

  When the instrument is played for the 
  public.
Times may be shown in either 12-hour or 24-hour formats.
Examples: 9am; 1930-2100.
Automatic play and/or clock-chime operation is explicitly identified when known.

This section is either omitted or marked "unknown" if nothing is known about the playing or operating schedule.

Can you provide a more accurate playing or operating schedule?

*Remarks: 

  Here you may find additional plain-text
  information that does not fit into the
  other categories.
This section is omitted if there are no remarks.  Most often it is used to report historical facts (renovations, etc.), as well as technical quirks that don't fit into other fields of the database from which the site data pages are built.

Do you know of information which doesn't fit into any other category but that might important to guest artists?

*Technical data: 

  Number of bells, bellfounder, date of installation, type of playing
  mechanism, keyboard range, transposition and other items of technical
  information appear here.
This section is always present, although its information content may vary widely depending on what is known about a particular site.  The contents should be mostly self-explanatory, but we do offer an explanation of the possible complexities of keyboard range.

This is the only section where individual items of information may be explicitly shown as "unknown".  (Unknown details of keyboard ranges are shown as dashes: "----".)  Such items are critically important; if you can provide them, please do so!

*Links:

If the owning institution has an institutional presence on the Web, then a link to that Website appears here.  Usually that is accompanied by some comments about what pictures and information related to the instrument (or the building housing it) can be found there.

If we know of anyplace else on the World Wide Web which presents a page about this site, or contains a significant mention of this site, or includes a picture of this site, then the appropriate link(s) appear here with brief descriptions.

If better pictures than can be found on the Web have been contributed, they will be found here (as links, not as embedded graphics).

For pages which were posted before late February 2006, the map links described under Location (above) either appear here or are absent.  (Unfortunately, some of the map links and icons are broken because the mapping service for which they were constructed is defunct, and the links have not yet been replaced.)
If such links are here and broken, the following text was relevant to them, and may again become relevant in the future:
If the site identification line at the top of the page included a site flag, then the map may also show icons for other sites in the same city.  (Sometimes it will be necessary to zoom a map out to see the the additional icons.)  If so, then there will also be direct links from this site data page to those, so that you can find them more easily.

Even if none of the above are known, the section heading will be present, and there will be at least one link back to an index page from which the present page could have been found.  (Usually there are several such back-links.)

If you know the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of any other page on the World Wide Web which has to do with this particular instrument, please provide that!  It will save other visitors to this site data page from having the search the Web for it.

If you discover that any link which is present is actually broken, please notify the page maintainer.  Use the mail-link at the bottom of that page, not the one you are reading just now!

If you have good digital photographs of towers, bells, mechanisms, etc., you are welcome to contribute them.  Credits and copyright information can be included or omitted, as you prefer.

*Status: 

  This page was built from the database on dd-Mmm-yy
  based on textual data last updated on yyyy/mm/dd
  and on technical data last updated on yyyy/mm/dd
Three different dates are presented in order to make clear that the currency of the data (or lack thereof) has nothing to do with when the Web page was created.  Revision dates for textual and technical data are tracked separately in the database from which these site data pages are generated.  (In addition, the "Technical data" section will normally end with a statement about the date of the most recent source for that data.)  This three-line section is always present in exactly this format, and the three dates remain unchanged when the Links section is the only one to be revised.

The page title which appears in the window title bar of your browser is the name of the HTML file for the site data page.  This is always 8 characters long, in uppercase, with the first two characters being the standard postal abbreviation for the state (in USA) or province (in Canada) or the ISO standard country code.

Similarly, the page title for site index pages (other than foundry indexes) is the name of the HTML file for that page.  However, it may be of any length, and is always mixed case (uppercase "IX" followed by other uppercase letters followed by some lowercase letters).

Page titles for other pages are unrelated to the names of their respective files, and are generally mixed case.  For example, the title of the page you are now reading is "Standard format".


To request clarification of any of the explanations written above, use the email link on the bottom line of this page.
If you can provide better information for any specific site, please do so by using the email link on the bottom line of the page where that information belongs.
Thanks in advance!

[Tower Bells Home Page] [Site Map] [The builder] [What's New]

This page was created 1996/12/12, adapted for this Website 2004/04/29 and last revised 2006/03/20.

Please send comments or questions to csz_stl@swbell.net