L. Silveira Sigma
I would dare to say that so far the most important contribution of computers to historical research is the availability of an increasing amount of information: no one ignores today the bibliographic databases, the digital libraries and archives of different sorts at our disposal in a user-friendly environment.
Computers also allow us to process greater amounts of historical information than before, mainly through the use of databases. But if I would have to suggest a field where computer applications may change historical research, increasing historian’s ability to question the past, I would point out to Geographic Information Systems. History is about time and space and GIS open up new possibilities of relating these two fundamental dimensions. A deeper collaboration between historians and geographers is also expected to follow from the use this technology.
In my presentation I will address these general problems and I will present the work we have been doing with several research groups since 1993 applying GIS to Portuguese History. Most of our effort has been devoted to the production of a detailed cartography of parish and municipal limits, and we have recently been able to cover the period of 1801 to 1911; but we have also used the system to study the evolution of the Portuguese State and population in the beginning of the nineteenth century; finally, through the website Atlas ( www.fcsh.unl.pt/atlas ) we also tried new ways of publishing cartography and census data.
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