2008 Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association (www.ssha.org)

Session Theme: CONTRIBUTORY GIS FOR HISTORICAL RESEARCH
Location/Date: Miami, Florida, USA , 23-26 OCTOBER 2008 Proposal Deadline: February 15, 2008
Organizers: Ian Gregory, Lancaster University, UK; Mary Ruvane, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
Contact: Mary Ruvane (Ruvane@email.unc.edu)

Real time contributory Web applications are fast becoming the de facto tool of choice for facilitating timely information exchange between various social groups. Established examples include wikipedia, facebook, and flickr. More recently applications for sharing geographic information have emerged, such as GoogleEarth and its companion Wikimapia, providing an unprecedented opportunity for historical researchers to collaborate on reconstructing past geographies. But how trustworthy are these burgeoning websites? Is the shared information accurate, in standard formats, well documented, or peer reviewed? To be a viable tool in support of academic research these concerns must be addressed.

This session seeks speakers who have successfully adopted contributory GIS tools in support of their historical research or teaching. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

1) Projects utilizing contributory Historical GIS
2) Accuracy of geographic representations
3) Trustworthiness of shared data
4) Data standards solutions
5) Authenticating archival source material
6) Peer review/moderator solutions
7) Dealing with inferences
8) Privacy & security issues
9) Data contributor diparities (e.g., amateurs, geographers, historians, etc.)

Mary B. Ruvane
PhD Student
School of Information & Library Science
University of North Carolina @ Chapel Hill ruvane@email.unc.edu mruvane@nc.rr.com

Posted to Maps-1 on 2/11/08