About the Institute

In 2009 and 2010, with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Scholars' Lab at the University of Virginia Library hosted three tracks of an "Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship." This website -- which our participants dubbed not a clearinghouse but a "sharing-house" -- was released in 2011 to serve as a community-driven resource for the spatial humanities.

The Institute, which was known by its hashtag, "#geoinst," brought cultural heritage workers, software developers, and scholars to the Scholars' Lab in three tracks for intensive training, conversation, and collaborative work in GIS and spatial technologies for the humanities. The program is outlined on our Curriculum page. Here, you can also learn more about the impetus for the Institute, and see who taught courses and workshops, offered advice, or worked with us as an affiliated fellow.

This Spatial Humanities website is a contribution of the Scholars' Lab to the broad community interested in GIS for humanities inquiry and in place-based digital scholarship. It responds to needs identified in conversation with our 56 participants and 21 Institute faculty members, and includes:

• a set of framing essays on the spatial turn across the disciplines by Institute fellow Dr. Jo Guldi (whose collaboration on this website was invaluable);
• an evolving, crowdsourced catalog of research resources and featured projects and organizations;
• related feeds from Q&A sites and social media;
• and a peer-reviewed, occasional publication for "step-by-step" helpsheets and tutorials in humanities GIS.

Please help us keep this community-based resource current by contributing to it! You can:

• use Zotero to freely upload research citations, projects, and links to groups;
• contribute your own tutorials and helpsheets in "Step By Step" format for peer review and publication;
• adopt the #geoinst hashtag in social media and bookmarking;
• ask questions and offer help with GIS on DH Answers or Stack Exchange;
• and offer your commentary on the essays we've shared.

Learn more about how you can contribute to the Spatial Humanities site, here.

With thanks to the NEH, the staff of the Scholars' Lab, our fabulous Institute faculty and attendees, and everyone who contributed to the success of the program,

— Bethany Nowviskie,
Director of Digital Research & Scholarship
University of Virginia Library