Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
georeferenced content is disseminated in the field using devices such
as tablet computers and smart phones.
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There is clearly enormous po-
tential to use these with humanities GIS-based projects, but how these
contribute to scholarship and pedagogy remains to be seen.
Moving beyond the Discipline of History
A theme that has occurred oten in this topic is that GIS enables any
datasets to be integrated as long as they can be georeferenced to loca-
tions on the Earth's surface. If it is possible to use this technique to cross
the boundaries between “data silos,” it should also be possible to use it
to cross subject and disciplinary boundaries. One of the most obvious
areas where there is the potential to do this but where surprisingly litle
progress has been made to date is within humanities GIS itself. The two
subjects within the humanities where the use of GIS is best developed
are history and archaeology.
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Despite both fields being interested in
the past, they remain very separate. This may reflect their different ori-
gins - in representing census-style data for history and survey data for
archaeology - but both fields have developed way beyond these begin-
nings. There must be the potential to break down the divisions between
the two to learn lessons from each other and to develop scholarship that
draws on traditions and sources from both disciplines. Unfortunately,
once these divisions have grown up this can be harder than it should
be. As GIS use develops in other disciplines within the humanities it is
in everyone's interest that such divisions do not develop; instead, there
should be a strong interdisciplinary approach.
As well as divisions between subjects, the divide between quantita-
tive and qualitative approaches is one of the most pronounced within
academia, and, in geography in particular, it is sometimes highly divi-
sive.
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The ability to integrate different types of sources also opens up
the intriguing possibility of crossing this divide. In general, quantitative
data give us comprehensive but abstracted sources that are very good at
describing paterns but are less good at explaining why these paterns
are as they are. Qualitative sources tend to be more selective but more
in-depth and are much more effective at developing explanations. Bring-
