S. Visser

Historische geografie en digitale vastlegging: een kritische analyse.

Historisch geografisch tijdschrift 25 (2007) 15 - 26.

De afgelopen jaren hebben verschillende organisaties gewerkt aan digitale bestanden van cultuurhistorische gegevens. Bij een onderzoek naar het historische landschap in de gemeente Reeuwijk bleken die bestanden de nodige beperkingen te hebben. In dit artikel worden de belangrijkste discussiepunten behandeld. De nadruk ligt hierbij op twee doelgroepen die eerder grotendeels onbelicht zijn gebleven, namelijk de gebruikers op het lokale niveau en de historisch-geografen zelf.

Digital historical geographical records in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands several GIS-systems are used to record and map information on cultural heritage elements of landscapes. They mostly belong to private organisations or to provinces and projects. The most general system is Cultgis, containing information on historical-geographical landscape elements. It is a part of KICH (Knowledge Infrastructure Cultural History). Cultgis was originally developed as a tool to help develop a national policy regarding landscape in the eighties and nineties of the 20th century and is hardly suitablefor recording the history of the cultural landscape at a local level as a tool for historical geographical researchers. A Research project in Reeuwijk, in the province of South Holland, led to the Reeuwijk Vademecum. Not only can this system fulfil the wants of local officials, but also the wants of local and regional researchers - laymen and professionals - and of historical geographers. In that sense it can also contribute to the participation of the public in environmental policy and planning. Such a fundamental and basic system is capable of selecting and extracting information for use on higher levels, like the development of provincial and national policies, or for planning purposes. It is highly recommendable that all the need for information and the information systems are classified within an information architecture, developed with the furthering of a good knowledge of the historical landscape of the Netherlands in mind.