About GIS for History

GIS for History© is a project of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). It is supported by a "We the People" grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (grant number EE-50023-04, "Bringing Historical Census Data Alive with GIS").

The goal of the project is to create and share history curriculum materials and lesson plans using historical census data and primary source on-line documents, within a web-based GIS. In this way we hope to make the historical census data accessible to a much wider audience of history students of all ages, and to help teachers put these data into context for their students.

Our GIS web application was built by Inquirium, LLC using the MapServer development environment. Our website was designed and built by Inquirium, LLC.

Partner Organizations, Collaborators and Contributors

• Inquirium, LLC, builders of the GIS for History application and web site
• The National Historical Geographic Information System Project, source for all historical county and state boundary files
• The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, source for historical census data
• Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) at the Minnesota Population Center, source for historical census data
• Northwestern University's GEODE Initiative, makers of MyWorld, a GIS application designed for the K-12 classroom
• Social Explorer: An excellent on-line GIS with current and historical census data mapped for the US.
• The Newberry Library, home of the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries Project, and the Chicago Metro History Education Center
• Teaching & Learning with GIS: our research project studying how middle-grades and high school students learn while using GIS in science and social studies investigations

People