Humphrey Southall, Ian Gregory, and Paul Ell, Great Britain Historical GIS Project, 2002.

WEB LOCATION: http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/gbhgis/

SYNOPSIS:

Southall, Gregory, and Ell have developed this massive online historical GIS project containing ranges of data at the parish level in Great Britain from the 1830s forward for researchers.

EXCERPT:

"The Great Britain Historical GIS is not simply an old map, or a collection of old maps. As far as possible it is a record of change, and in particular a record of changing boundaries, which has been assembled from a combination of old maps and also textual records of change. For example, an official report tells us that a particular district had its boundary changed on the 1st of January 1905, while two separate maps show boundaries in 1901 and 1908. Our system stores ALL of this information, including the date of the change, so it can construct an accurate map of the district for ANY date, not just 1901 and 1908. Exactly how we do this is explained in the description of the Mark I GIS, but the important point is that our system is not simply a base map for the historian--it can be used as a base map generator, creating maps for a wide range of dates, types of unit and parts of the country."