CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
EN/FR
Search
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Columbia, Maryland

Planned community in Maryland, United States

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Columbia is a planned community in Howard County, Maryland, United States, consisting of 10 self-contained villages. With a population of 104,681 at the 2020 census, it is the second-most-populous community in Maryland, after Baltimore. Columbia, located between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., is part of the Baltimore metropolitan area and is tracked by the United States Census Bureau as a census-designated place. Columbia proper consists only of territory governed by the Columbia Association, a not-for-profit management company. The United States Postal Service also uses the name for other communities that predate Columbia, including Simpsonville and Atholton; the Census Bureau also counts part of Clarksville as Columbia.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Columbia, Maryland” is planned community in Maryland, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Columbia, Maryland and Planned, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2020—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Columbia, Maryland and Planned is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “planned community in Maryland, United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The first chronological checks are 2020.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Columbia, Maryland”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Columbia, Maryland primary sources, Columbia, Maryland archive and Columbia research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Columbia, Maryland”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Columbia, Maryland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.