A place in history: a guide to using GIS in historical research

CHAPTER 9: PRESERVATION, DOCUMENTATION AND THE ROLE OF THE HISTORY DATA SERVICE

9.1 Introduction

Chapter 3 makes it clear that creating or acquiring GIS datasets can be extremely costly in terms of both budgets and time. In later chapters methods by which existing GIS datasets can be taken were also described. These can take the form of integration with other datasets to produce new products (Chapter 4), creating new datasets from analyses (Chapter 7 and Chapter 8) and creating visualisations that could potentially take the form of datasets (Chapter 6). In order that full use can be made of any dataset it is essential that it be adequately preserved and well documented.

The History Data Service (HDS) is funded by JISC to collect, manage, and encourage re-use of digital resources which result from or support historical research and teaching. The HDS is part of the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex and is the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) service provider for the historical disciplines, and one of its main roles is to preserve and disseminate historical datasets. The majority of the datasets within the HDS collection include a geographical component of some kind and can therefore be incorporated into a GIS, and it may be worth checking early on in the life of a GIS project to see whether the HDS holds any data that might be useful. The following section details how to obtain data from the HDS.

Similarly any datasets that are created, either by data capture or by modifying existing datasets, for use in a GIS can be deposited with the HDS to ensure their longevity and future use across changes in software and computing technologies. The third section explains the process for depositing data with the HDS.

The fourth section in this chapter deals with the issues of metadata and documentation. These are integral and important elements of a dataset, GIS or otherwise, which enables someone who has not been involved in its creation to use it. At the most basic level these describe what the dataset contains, but they also describe the provenance of the data, the processes by which the data were captured, decisions made by the researchers when coding data and so on.

The final section of this chapter provides details of how to obtain further information about these issues.