Geographic Information Systems: A New Research Method for Book History

Abstract

Geographic Information Systems: A New Research Method for Book History 1 Fiona A. Black (bio), Bertrum H. MacDonald (bio), and J. Malcolm W. Black (bio) In their seminal work on book history, Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin very aptly described the early spread of printing as the “geography of the book.” 2 Their account appeared years before any means was available to relate effectively important spatial data with some or all of the other factors that book historians traditionally study. Beginning in the 1960s, however, new computer-based technology that deals with spatial data—geographic information systems (GIS)—was developed, first by government agencies, then by private industry. More recently, application of this technology has spread to the academy with increasing use by individual scholars. After three decades of development, GIS technology has evolved to a state where it can be employed to explore constructively the “geography of the book.” Although GIS technology is not yet familiar to book historians, it has been employed in an increasing number of fields since its inception and it currently forms a multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide. GIS technology has been used principally in environmental and other applied sciences and as a support for management decision-making systems. 3 This technology might have remained of little interest to those concerned with the historical spread and development of print culture, except for two relatively recent developments. First, a growing number of scholars have begun to recognize [End Page 11] that GIS can provide a powerful means of answering historical questions; and second, the increasing availability of GIS software for use with personal computers means that it is now practical for individual researchers to take advantage of the technology. 4 Book historians and bibliographers are of course no strangers to computer technologies and in this article we aim to show that GIS, with its visual and analytical capabilities, is another application so robust that it will help to uncover new information about the history of print culture. Our purpose here is to highlight potential avenues of exploration that will be of collective benefit in many aspects of book history research, and at the same time we call for contributions of databases relevant to a proposed collaborative project. Computer-based Tools for Book History Computer technologies, especially databases, have become familiar in recent decades not only for facilitating improved access to secondary literature but also for constructing primary research resources, such as the Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue (ESTC). Researchers are not limited to bibliographic files, however, for there are now a number of significant nonbibliographic databases related to the history of books and readers, including book-trade indexes for a variety of cities and countries and the new Reading Experience Database. The value of these databases notwithstanding, we believe that computer technologies can be applied by book historians with much greater consequence than they have hitherto. Robert Darnton contended that Febvre and Martin’s approach to book history “demonstrated the importance of asking new questions, using new methods, and tapping new sources.” 5 It is this perspective, namely, using new methods to tap new sources in order to ask new questions and thereby arrive at new knowledge, that governs our consideration of geographic information systems for book history investigations. Historians face a wealth of data as they unravel the complexity of print culture. Numerous aspects of this culture, such as the reading experiences of an individual, are qualitative in nature and cannot be “counted” (though as the Reading Experience Database would indicate, they can still be organized into database fields for the purposes of research). Nonetheless, many other aspects can be quantified or positioned in space, for example, the number of books printed; the number of books sold; the quantities of books exported; the time from date of publication to the arrival in particular towns, cities, and countries; the location of bookstores; and literacy rates of [End Page 12] distinct populations. Indeed as historians of print culture accumulate increasing masses of quantitative data, it is becoming clear that much more can be done by way of analysis. As Michael Goodchild, director of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis in the United States has...