Please join us for a book talk and reception celebrating the recent release of Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship, edited by Anne Kelly Knowles (Middlebury College) with a digital supplement edited by Amy Hillier (University of Pennsylvania).

Time: 5:00-6:30pm
Date: Tuesday, March 25
Place: Rosenwald Gallery
Rare Book & Manuscript Library
6th floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center
University of Pennsylvania
3420 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6206

In the last decade, historical GIS has emerged as a promising new methodology for studying the past. Historical GIS is the use of geographic information systems software and allied geospatial methods for historical research and teaching. Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship offers case studies and essays on key issues involving historical GIS, highlighting the unprecedented range of tools to visualize historical information in a geographical context. Quantitative social science historians are embracing GIS to facilitate the mapping of large datasets, but anyone with access to the software and the skills to use it can include mapping in research. This change is little short of revolutionary considering how few scholars or students made maps even ten years ago. Historical maps are suddenly in great demand as digitally modified, "georeferenced" images that enable researchers to use GIS as a visual medium of communication and analysis.

Placing History includes a digital supplement CD containing ArcExplorer Java Edition for Education software, map layers, PowerPoint presentations, informational videos, and notes. The CD can be used as an instructor resource for classroom instruction.

Anne Kelly Knowles is a historical geographer who teaches at Middlebury College. She has edited volumes of essays on historical GIS, including Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History (ESRI Press 2002). Her first book, Calvinists Incorporated: Welsh Immigrants on Ohio's Industrial Frontier, was a study of the influence of Welsh Calvinist religion on immigrants' involvement in American capitalism. She is now writing a book titled Making Iron: The Struggle to Modernize the American Iron Industry, 1800-1868.

Amy Hillier teaches courses on the application of GIS in city planning, urban studies, and social work at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. Her research has focused on GIS applications in redlining and housing discrimination, affordable housing, and public health. She has published articles in the Journal of Housing, Journal of Urban History, Journal of Planning History, and Pennsylvania History. Previously, Dr. Hillier was director of research at the University of Pennsylvania's Cartographic Modeling Lab.

*Above description cited from ESRI Press website: http://store.esri.com.

Reservations not required. Amy Hillier & Anne Kelly Knowles will talk about their book, followed by a reception.

For more information:
Martha Brogan, Director of Collection Development and Management