A Place in History - Section 3.9

The right of Ian Gregory to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All material supplied via the Arts and Humanities Data Service is protected by copyright, and duplication or sale of all or any part of it is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for your personal research use or educational purposes in electronic or print form. Permission for any other use must be obtained from the Arts and Humanities Data Service.

Electronic or print copies may not be offered, whether for sale or otherwise, to any third party.

	A place in history: a guide to using GIS in historical research CHAPTER 3: ACQUIRING SPATIAL DATA
	3.9 Buying data or acquiring it free For academics in the United Kingdom there are a variety of organisations that provide GIS data either free or at low cost. For historians the most useful of these is likely to be the History Data Service (HDS), part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS). More detail on the role of the HDS is given in Chapter 9. EDINA at the University of Edinburgh provides a suite of services including: UKBORDERS, which disseminates contemporary and historical boundary data for the UK; and Digimap, which provides a certain amount of Ordnance Survey (OS) digital data. The MIMAS service at the University of Manchester provides access to a variety of datasets, including Bartholomew's map data; while the KINDS project provides a variety of visualisation tools that enhance access to datasets. The Public Record Office (PRO) is increasingly becoming involved in electronic publishing, although only a limited amount of data are currently available online. Other sources of free or low-cost data include the Digital Chart of the World, which provides data on a variety of different countries; and the United States Geological Survey (USGS), which provides a variety of products often at relatively cheap rates. The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) has started to produce online e-publications of historical datasets, and also incorporates a metadata clearing-house that allows users to search for historical GIS datasets. A variety of commercial companies sell spatially referenced data. The most obvious source of this in Britain is the Ordnance Survey which sells digital versions of many of their map products. Other commercial sources include the AA and Bartholomew's. Purchasing these data can be expensive and copyright limitations may be placed on their use, but buying the data does provide high-quality products quickly and without the risks involved in capturing it yourself. Whatever the source of data it is important to bear two things in mind: the first is the limitations of the original source material and its fitness for the purpose that you want to use it for. The second is any restrictions that are placed on the use of the data through copyright or other restrictions. Misuse of this may result in civil or criminal action and is also likely to lead to people and organisations being less willing to disseminate data.


	© Ian Gregory 2002 The right of Ian Gregory to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All material supplied via the Arts and Humanities Data Service is protected by copyright, and duplication or sale of all or any part of it is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for your personal research use or educational purposes in electronic or print form. Permission for any other use must be obtained from the Arts and Humanities Data Service. Electronic or print copies may not be offered, whether for sale or otherwise, to any third party.