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Historic Digimap 2012/2013

EDINA undertook a survey of Historic Digimap users from November 2012 to February 2013. The survey was accessed from the Marine Digimap homepage and the link was emailed to users.

217 responses were received, a summary of which is presented here:

Uptake by discipline, role and purpose

Discipline

Respondents selected their discipline from the list shown below; they could select more than one discipline and could specify “Other”. The disciplines specified in under other were put into one of the other disciplines where appropriate.

A broad range of disciplines were represented in the responses: Geography and environment, Humanities (including Archaeology), and Architecture and planning represented the three largest disciplines of users, at 24%, 23% and 20% respectively.

Engineering (6%); as well as Agriculture, Food and Forestry, and Education and research methods (5%) were well represented.

Discipline	Number	Percentage
Agriculture, food, and forestry	18	5%
Architecture and planning	69	20%
Biological sciences	9	3%
Business and management studies	2	1%
Communication and media studies	5	1%
Creative and performing arts	4	1%
Education and research methods	17	5%
Engineering	22	6%
Geography and environment	78	23%
Humanities	81	24%
Law	1	0%
Mathematics and computer science	5	1%
Medicine including dentistry	3	1%
Modern languages and area studies	0	0%
Nursing, midwifery and allied health	2	1%
Physical sciences	11	3%
Psychology	0	0%
Social sciences	13	4%
Veterinary medicine	0	0%
Other	3	1%

Role

The majority of survey respondents were Students. This reflects the numbers of students registered to use the service.

Purpose

Respondents were asked for what purposes they were using Historic Digimap, they could tick all options that applied to them in this question.

Historic Digimap was mostly used for research (25% growing to 40% when combined with postgraduate or undergraduate thesis work)..

Coursework (19%) made up a large part of the use of Digimap as did the teaching and support options when combined (21%). The nature of the data in Historic Digimap also makes it very popular for personal interest (20%).

User Comments

• “Used in teaching GIS to archaeology students - both in developing practical teaching packs and by students for their assessed projects.” Lecturer, Higher Education Institution.
• “All architecture students use historic maps to trace key developments within a specific area. This helps to generate future design concepts and ideas.” Student, Higher Education Institution.
• “Shoreline retreat and coastal change - great and essential for research.” Researcher, Higher Education Institution.

 

Perceived quality of the service

Recommendation

When users were asked if they would recommend Historic Digimap, 95% agreed; only 1% disagreed.

User Comments

• “It offers an invaluable access to previously under-utilised historic documents.” Researcher, Higher Education Institution.
• “Fascinating for everybody to see development of towns over time.” Student, Higher Education Institution.
• “There's basically nothing else out there with such an abundance of information.” Information Professional, Higher Education Institution.

 

Perceived Ease of Use

66% of respondents found Historic Digimap easy or very easy to use; only 7% found it difficult or very difficult.

User Comments

• “Easy to use, data is great and always delivered quickly. Easy to insert into GIS.” Researcher, Further Education Institution.
• “It is something which anyone could use to explore aspects of interest that are relevant; can be readily made to cross reference with census and other online material.” Researcher, Higher Education Institution.
• “Easy to use, great source for historic maps and free to use through university library.” Student, Higher Education Institution.

 

Perceived Time Saving

The survey asked if the users work would take longer without Historic Digimap, 91% of respondents Agreed; only 2% disagreed. Many of the comments stated that their only alternative was to visit libraries in their study areas: There are “No copies of Lincolnshire maps in County Durham!” Researcher, Higher Education Institution.

User Comments

• “This is such a handy tool for typing in a post code and seeing how the area changed over the years. Doing this without Digimap would take so long.” Student, Higher Education Institution.
• “Speed of obtaining relevant maps allows more time to be spent on research.” Student, Higher Education Institution.
• “It would be nigh on impossible to find the information without delving into libraries etc, and even then trying to geo-reference back to current data would be very difficult and time consuming.” Researcher, Higher Education Institution.

 

What would happen without Historic Digimap?

In response to the question “What alternative would you use if Historic Digimap was not available?”; 45% did not know, 13% said none and 42% gave and alternative.

The 42% of users who said they would use an alternative was made up of 30% who said they would use paper maps (dependent on library holdings); 4% who would use a Paid Service; 3% who would create the data themselves(adding to the length of time a project would take); 3% who would use free online mapping services such as Google and Bing (which do not have much Historic detail or data to download) and 2% who gave examples of free online services(which were not as broad in their coverage).

• “Availability of Historic information is limited from other sources.” Lecturer, Higher Education Institution.
• “…archives are difficult to access and obtaining copies without excessive expense is impossible.” Student, Higher Education Institution.
• “Much better than anything else available to me.” Researcher, Higher Education Institution.