AHA 2014: Getting Started in Digital History Spatial History & hGIS Breakout Session

This page contains getting-started resources for historians interested in the basics of spatial history and hGIS, and for historians attending the AHA’s Getting Started in Digital History workshop on Jan. 2, 2014.

The PPT slide deck for this session is available here. Many of the links are provided in the PPT Notes field.

Tutorials & Introductions

• Railways and Population Change in Industrializing England: An Introduction to Historical GIS (Mt. Holyoke)
• What is GIS and when should I use it? (A very basic tutorial on what GIS is, how its components work, and why it’s useful. Part of the Community Tool Box at University of Kansas)
• Creating a narrated tour in Google Earth
• ArcGIS desktop tutorial

hGIS Examples

• Lists of historical GIS projects from
  • Association of American Geographers
  • Wired Humanities Project, University of Oregon
  • The Spatial History Project, Stanford
  • The Historical GIS Research Network
  • HistoricalGIS.org
  • Wikipedia
• US Historical Population Density
• New York city GIS project
• Neatline’s Lovecraft Exhibit

GIS Tools

Entry-level

(Free or very low cost, with low learning curves. Neogeography-oriented.

• Google Maps and Google Map Engine. This combines some of the powerful layering that higher-end tools are famous for with an easy search-drag-drop tool for adding new points to a map.
• Google Maps and Google Fusion Tables, with tutorials from
  • [Jack Dougherty (Trinity College) demonstrating placement of individual points and outlined shapes](http://commons.trincoll.edu/jackdougherty/) on a Google-generated map

Mid-level

Cost varies; some technical expertise required.

• Google Earth. Lots of pre-existing layers available for import. Allows easy polygon editing and georeferenced map overlay. Interface can be frustrating, slow, because of high overhead. Allows GPS import from smartphone.
• Neatline. Allows easy overlay of georeferenced historical maps but interface (both for creation and browsing) can be confusing.
• Open Street Map. Like Google maps, but more flexible layers
• ArcGIS online. A simplified online version of ArcGIS with a 30-day trial. Costly but very flexible and with an easier interface than ArcGIS desktop software. Allows GPS import from smartphone.

Advanced

Commercial software with high learning curve

• ArcGIS. The industry standard. Includes a desktop tutorial and has a full list of desktop GIS tools from Wikipedia

KML, shapefile and Statistics Resources

• ArcGIS tutorial on KML files
• Convert KML (google) to Shapefile (ArcGIS)

• National Historical Geographic Information System. KML and shapefiles from historical census data between 1790 and 2012.

• Stamen. Stylized modern cartographs and map layers