What Historians Want from GIS

By J. B. "Jack" Owens

An increasing number of historians, particularly those dealing with world history or the history of large geographic regions, are becoming interested in using geographic information systems for research and teaching.

Historians are noticing GIS because they normally deal with processes in complex, dynamic, nonlinear systems and, therefore, demand a means to organize a large number of variables and identify those variables most likely implicated in the stability and transformation of such systems.