Key:department
 department
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| Description |
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A higher-education department or departmental affiliation, with a secondary use for sections within large shops.  
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| Group: education |
| Used on these elements |
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| Useful combination |
| See also |
| Status: in use |
| Tools for this tag |
department=* is primarily used in higher education to identify or classify an academic department or record departmental affiliation.
A less common but established secondary use in indoor retail mapping is department=store_section for a separately mapped section within a department store or another large shop. Accompanying tags normally make the meaning clear.
Higher education
On a feature representing an academic department, the value often indicates its academic field or grouping. On an office or other related feature, it may instead record departmental affiliation; on a shared building this can be ambiguous when only particular rooms belong to the department.
university=department may identify the organisational unit itself. When combined with office=university, it may describe a concrete department office, secretariat, or similar contact point. faculty=* may record the department's faculty affiliation.
University terminology and structures vary. For the organisational type, a unit presented as an institute may use university=institute rather than university=department. These tags provide rough classifications rather than a detailed organisational hierarchy.
Usage is not standardised. Many values based on academic fields use lower-case English words, with underscores between words. The displayed name is normally recorded in name=* and the mapped feature's own reference in ref=*. Semicolons may separate distinct fields.
Example
university=department office=university faculty=science department=computer_science name=Department of Computer Science operator=Example University
Store sections
department=store_section is used by some mappers on a separately mapped section within a shop=department_store or another large shop. The whole store remains mapped with shop=department_store or another appropriate shop=* value.
An existing indoor-mapping scheme combines it with level=* for the floor and vending=* for the type of goods sold:
department=store_section level=1 vending=clothes
See also
university=department– an academic department as an organisational featureuniversity=institute– an institute within a universityoffice=university– a concrete university officefaculty=*– a faculty or broad academic affiliationshop=department_store– a department store- OpenLevelUp/Use cases/Shopping mall – documented indoor mapping of store sections