The Chronicle for Higher Education has a fascinating article on using digital technologies, including GIS software, to visualize historical data:
With Digital Maps, Historians Chart a New Way Into the Past: A push to make historical data more visual could yield a better understanding of events
http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=zxjdVkzpBmjwtnyxPzsm2yM2QwygVMjm
Edward L. Ayers, a history professor and dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia discusses the ways visualization of historical data can help researchers, faculty and students understand "the patterns of the past" in new ways. He is well-known for leading the the creation of the Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War project,
In collaboration with William G. Thomas III, a professor of humanities at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Ayers' new project is called the Aurora Project: A Dynamic Atlas of American History. He and Thomas previewed what they mean by "visualizing history" at the recent EDUCAUSE conference in their presentation Time, Space, and History. Ayers showed "an animated map of the United States featuring yellow dots representing the population density of African-Americans between 1810 and 1890" and Thomas demonstrated his animated map of "the development and social impact of the railroads during the same period of the 1800s." To see a video of this presentation, select the multimedia link at the EDUCAUSE site.
Ayers was inspired to think about the visualization of historical data when he attended a meeting of humanities researchers at the National Science Foundation and through his experience as dean reviewing tenure applications from science professors who made "these incredibly complex arguments with visualization."
