Spatial History Project by Richard White (Past Director, Stanford University Spatial History Project)
The Spatial Turn by Guldi (Scholars' Lab, University of Virginia)
There are many open source applications and software available for spatial analysis and visualisation of spatial data. Here are some options and guides, as an alternative from ArcGIS.
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QGIS (Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS)
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R/Rstudio (Unix, Windows, Mac OS) |
Tableau (Windows, MacOS)
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Heatmapper: Create your own heat maps at the click of a mouse. Overlay your own image and input your own data to automatically generate the heat map. This tool would be useful for behavioral studies or space ethnography.
Datawrapper: Open source tool helping anyone to create simple, correct and embeddable charts in minutes. It is easy to use, gives you full control and is customisable.
Kepler.gl: Powerful open source geospatial analysis tool for large-scale data sets.
Infographics Generator:
Easel.ly: Thousands of templates for various purposes.
Canva: Easy drag-and-drop. Templates available.
Pikotochart: Interactive charts and maps. Large library of images and icons.
Historical GIS: technologies, methodologies and scholarship
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Historical GIS is an emerging field that uses GIS to research the geographies of the past. This technology offers unparalleled opportunities to add insight and rejuvenate historical research through the ability to identify and use the geographical characteristics of data. Historical GIS introduces the basic concepts and tools underpinning GIS technology, describing and critically assessing the visualisation, analytical and e-science methodologies that it enables and examining key scholarship where GIS has been used to enhance research debates.
Toward Spatial Humanities: historical GIS and spatial history
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The application of GIS to issues in history is among the most exciting developments in both digital and spatial humanities. Describing a wide variety of applications, the essays in this volume highlight the methodological and substantive implications of a spatial approach to history. They illustrate how the use of GIS is changing our understanding of the geographies of the past and has become the basis for new ways to study history.
History and GIS: epistemologies, considerations and reflections
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Geographical Information Systems (GIS) - either as "standard" GIS or custom made Historical GIS (HGIS) - have become quite popular in some historical sub-disciplines, such as Economic and Social History or Historical Geography. "Mainstream" history, however, seems to be rather unaffected by this trend. More generally speaking: Why is it that computer applications in general have failed to make much headway in history departments, despite the first steps being undertaken a good forty years ago? With the "spatial turn" in full swing in the humanities, and many historians dealing with spatial and geographical questions, one would think GIS would be welcomed with open arms. Yet there seems to be no general anticipation by historians of employing GIS as a research tool. As mentioned, HGIS are popular chiefly among Historical Geographers and Social and Economic Historians. The latter disciplines seem to be predestined to use such software through the widespread quantitative methodology these disciplines have employed traditionally. Other historical sub-disciplines, such as Ancient History, are also very open to this emerging technology since the scarcity of written sources in this field can be mitigated by inferences made from an HGIS that has archaeological data stored in it, for example. In most of Modern History, however, the use of GIS is rarely seen. The intellectual benefit that a GIS may bring about seems not be apparent to scholars from this sub-discipline (and others). This book wants to investigate and discuss this controversy. Why does the wider historian community not embrace GIS more readily? While one cannot deny that the methodologies linked with a GIS follow geographical paradigms rather than historical ones, the potential of GIS as a 'killer application'nbsp; for digital historical scholarship should be obvious. This book brings together authors from Geography and History to discuss the value of GIS for historical research. The focus, however, will not be on the "how", but on the "why" of GIS in history.
Placing history : how maps, spatial data, and GIS are changing historical scholarship
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Tool Repositories
TAPoR: TAPoR (Text Analysis Portal for Research) is a platform to discover research tools for studying texts.
DiRT: DiRT (Digital Research Tools) is a directory of tools organized by research activity.
Data Cleaning Tools
OpenRefine (formerly Google Refine) is a powerful open source tool for working with messy data, cleaning it and transforming it from one format into another.
Network Analysis
GEPHI: Gephi is the leading visualization and exploration software for all kinds of graphs and networks.
Text Analysis
Voyant (word counts, trends): Voyant Tools is a web-based text reading and analysis environment.
Singapore:
Historical Street Maps - Downloadable street maps (from 1954)
National Archives of Singapore - Read here. Government files, private memoirs, historical maps and photographs, oral history interviews