Sharing Geographic Information 02/05/11

From September to December I have been read a pile of books about geographic information systems (GIS). I was working on a paper about GIS for one of my two classes. I chose the topic because I was working directly with two GIS implementations and the maps of a third when I was working for the Census over the spring and summer.

Sharing Geographic Information edited by Gerald Rushton and Harlan Joseph Onsrud was one of the books that came up during my research. I saw it as a potential source.

The book is a collection of essays about GIS and sharing information across agencies. The book though won't make into my paper for two reasons: age and focus. The book was published in 1995, and while it's not the oldest reference on my list by any means, it didn't cover any new or different ground from my other reference sources. There are only so many times and ways that I need terms defined. Had I read the book earlier in my research process I may very well have read it more closely and taken notes from it.

The second problem, from the point of view of my paper is the book's focus. For my paper I am most interested in how GIS can be used to plan for and respond to disaster. While this book does have essay on interagency sharing of information, none of them were really focused on the problems of including the general public in the equation.

The essays are informative but were not on topic for my paper. Three Stars.

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