Placing History: Released by ESRI Press

Vol. 3 Issue 1
February 2008

In February in Philadelphia, the temperature regularly drops below freezing and we at Azavea leave our speedos at home, tucked away in mothballs next to our short-shorts and sombreros. But here in the office we're kept toasty-warm by the electric glow of our monitors, rocked by the steady humming of our CPUs, and happily developing a veritable plethora of mind-scorchingly hot new projects! The next generation of Cicero is now updated with fresh legislative data from our noble neighbors to the north, the Canadians! A collaboration with Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive has brought about a brand-spanking-new application for mapping geneology online! And the launch of a new website empowers our fair city, the pulsating paradise of Philadelphia, to crack down on property fraud. Yes, we've been busy. We wouldn't have it any other way. Welcome to another edition of the Azavea Journal!

"It's an exciting time for historians, and this book is an expression of that innovation."

Our work on the PhillyHistory project and development of the Sajara® product has given us a chance to meet and work with many people working in the field of ‘historical GIS’. In 2005, we participated in the GeoHistory Symposium developed by the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL). We have also been working on a project at the University of Pennsylvania called ‘Mapping the DuBois Philadelphia Negro’ for which we are developing a web-based mapping application to support this research project led by Dr. Amy Hillier, Professor of City and Regional Planning at U-Penn. We’ll write about that in a future Azavea Journal, but the big news this month is that Dr. Hillier’s new book, Placing History has just been released by ESRI Press.

The full title - Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship – is a mouthful, but describes the contents well. Co-edited by Amy Hillier and historical geographer, Anne Kelly Knowles, the book is a series of case studies and essays on the key issues faced when using GIS tools to visualize historical information. With more powerful and easy-to-use software tools, geography is being applied to historical research in new unprecedented ways. Old maps are being mashed up against new maps, historical records are being geocoded to discover new patterns, and quantities of documents are being scanned and georeferenced. It’s an exciting time for historians, and this books is an expression of that innovation. An added bonus is a supplemental CD with software, data, powerpoints, videos, and notes for educators.

This book has been a lot of work for the editors and authors, but we’re just super-proud to see our friend Amy getting published. And if you’d like to hear her and co-editor Anne Kelly Knowles talk about the new book, check out the podcast.