Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
money, and this is of course why commercial companies such as Land-
mark Information have become involved in HGIS. However, this has
clearly not been the main justification for the Great Britain HGIS: our
main source of funding remains, by far, grants, not contract work or
other commercial earnings.
First, the construction of a national HGIS is one of the most ex-
pensive possible pieces of academic infrastructure construction in the
humanities and social sciences. It is almost impossible to justify the
cost, even to grant-giving bodies, if the only benefit will be to academic
historians. Note that the other beneficiaries may still be academic re-
searchers, as with the Great Britain HGIS's collaborations with medical
researchers. However, this need to demonstrate a wider public benefit is
particularly strong when the funding source is a digitization program.
That said, we would always emphasize that while the Vision of Britain
web interface is of limited use to GIS researchers, it clearly serves a large
audience of academic historians researching particular localities.
Second, although our nongrant income is a small percentage of the
total, it can be spent more flexibly and for purposes for which grants are
not available. Expenditure from grants is always carefully monitored.
Many grant-giving bodies pay only in arrears, based on evidence of ac-
tual expenditure. It is therefore impossible to build up any reserves and
consequently to retain staff during the almost inevitable periods when
grant applications go badly. Conversely, a major reason why the Great
Britain HGIS has been able to keep staff over long periods despite lack-
ing any core funding is reserves built up from contract work, although
universities of course vary in how far such money is available to the re-
searchers who brought it in. Another factor in sustaining staff has been
developing relationships with small charitable trusts, whose grants have
also been a small percentage of the total but very important in hard
times. “Commercial” earnings are also necessary to sustain the Vision
of Britain website, as there are
no
sources of grant funding for this kind
of ongoing cost.
Third, an increasing factor in the UK is the research assessment
framework managed by the higher education funding councils. Up to
now, this has been based almost entirely on academic peer review and
consequently has emphasized traditional publications, especially in peer-
