Putting the Great Britain Historical GIS on the web: A Vision of Britain through Time
The Great Britain Historical GIS (Geographical
Information System) has been developed since 1994 through a complex series of grants from research funding bodies. The original aim was to create a tool for researchers in economic, social and demographic history. The system contains extensive transcriptions of
statistical tables in the reports of the Census since 1801, plus vital registration data (births, marriages and deaths), unemployment and other measures of economic distress. All this information concerns geographical areas, from Great Britain as a whole down to individual parishes.
Our new project supported by the New Opportunities Fund builds on this work but is creating a different resource for a very different kind of audience. We have to move from a system built around proprietary GIS software which only a minority of the project’s staff know how to use to a web-based system, following open standards as far as possible, that attracts life-long learners because it is interesting and even fun. While one of our goals is to present our statistical information in interesting ways, our content must be broadened out to create a ‘sense of place’ with information on the history of every town and village in Great Britain: a true ‘vision of Britain through time’. This session explores different aspects of this transformation.