A Place in History - Section 8.4

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.

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	A place in history: a guide to using GIS in historical research CHAPTER 8: QUALITATIVE DATA IN GIS
	8.4 Conclusions The role of GIS with qualitative data has yet to be fully developed, however, early studies suggest that there is considerable potential here. This potential falls into two main areas. One area is as a catalogue tool that allows electronic archives to be queried and explored in a geographical manner. This is the approach followed by the Survivors of the Shoah and Perseus Projects. The second area is that it allows the historian to research the spatial side of a problem in a more integrated and usable way than would traditionally have been possible. This is demonstrated by the Salem witch-trials and the Valley of the Shadow projects' use of GIS to re-create local communities in order to gain a better understanding of events in the past. The use of GIS in qualitative research is not yet well developed, however, but the examples given here show that its power as an integrating and exploration technology and approach has considerable potential in this area, in addition to its more traditional role in humanities research.

	© 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.