Applying historical GIS beyond the academy: four use cases for the Great Britain HGIS
Total funding for the Great Britain Historical GIS now totals over $US 3.5m., but obtaining this funding required us to demonstrate that the results would benefit an audience beyond academic history. This chapter describes how we have worked with four other groups to meet their needs: health researchers, archivists, government environmental agencies and companies selling advice to the property sector. The main focus is on the reasons for the collaboration, with details of the actual research provided mainly via references. The case studies presented here are of course all drawn from the experience of one project, but that experience is quite diverse, and each case study ends with some more general lessons.
Rebuilding the Great Britain Historical GIS, Part 3:Integrating Qualitative Content for a Sense of Place
Abstract. This article describes the integration of old maps, descriptive gazetteers, and a large library of travel writing into the Great Britain Historical GIS, presenting a range of approaches to geo-referencing diverse historical sources. While previous parts focused on legally defined administrative areas and statistical reporting units, these qualitative sources concern a less formal geography of “places.” The article links these to administrative units in two ways: Places are contained within units, but units are named after places and are consequently subsidiary to them. While rejecting existing gazetteer data standards, the approach aligns well with that of historical place-name researchers. The final section describes how the structure interacts with search engines to support a very popular website for lifelong learners.
Finding and using inter-war maternity records.
This paper describes the results of a search for the obstetric records of a cohort of over 5,000 children who participated in surveys of childhood diet and growth during the late 1930s and early 1940s conducted by the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen. The surveys were conducted at sixteen centres throughout England and Scotland. Birth-weight data were found in hospitals, health authority archives and local authority record offices for approximately 10 per cent of these children. The sources and methods used to find the records are described and their representativeness is evaluated. It is anticipated that this report will be of some interest to medical historians and epidemiologists conducting retrospective studies.