Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Pa rt on e
Deepening Scholarship: Developing
Historiography through Spatial History
Historical GIS projects typically go through a number
of phases of which perhaps three can be identified: database develop-
ment, exploration and enhancement, and topic-led questions. The data-
base development phase, in which the database is constructed, is usually
the most time-consuming, which in turn tends to make it expensive in
terms of both academic time and frequently the grant income required to
make it happen. Perhaps ironically, it is also the phase for which the aca-
demic or academics concerned will receive the least credit, even though
it frequently involves a major scholarly effort.
The exploration and enhancement phase has a number of aspects of
which only a few may be relevant to a particular project. In most proj-
ects this phase will be concerned with producing initial results from the
database using a data-led perspective in which the researcher discovers
the information provided by the database. This stage may also involve
developing new methods for enhancing the database, interrogating the
data, or disseminating the data electronically, perhaps by puting the
database on the Internet to allow other users to explore it.
In the third stage, research shifts from being concerned with the
data and what can be done with them to taking a more traditional ap-
proach of choosing a historical topic and developing research questions
about it. The GIS database is used as the main source with which to
further develop the historiography concerned with that particular topic.
In other words, at this stage the researcher moves from having to have
the skills of a data analyst to being a more traditional historian. This is
also, as we have seen, the most important phase for the long-term success
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