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6 oeuvres 42 utilisateurs 1 Critiques

Œuvres de Shashi Shekhar

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With the world of GIS widening every day, it never hurts to have a good book nearby. The "Encyclopedia of GIS" claims to be such a reference book, although primarily aimed at GIS researchers and students. According to the publisher the book should be published both in a print version and an online XML reference version. We could, however, find no indication that the latter is available yet and only reviewed the print version.

As an encyclopedia I would expect at least two things from this book:
• it should be relatively complete;
• it should be easily usable as a desktop reference for every day use.
I have reviewed the book with the above in mind.

Content
This book, as with every encyclopedia, has many authors, most of whom come from an academic background. As a result quite a lot of attention is given to algorithms and the like (there are, for example, 27 entries on indexing algorithms alone). The content of the entries is, without any doubt, extensive with most entries covering multiple pages and including formulas and drawings. All entries conclude with a cross-reference and recommended further reading. I personally feel that the editors could have done a better job on this book since some entries overlap other entries and as such it can be confusing for readers to know where exactly to look for the information they want. There is, for example, an entry on the Web Feature Service as well as an article on the Web Feature Service AND the Web Map Service. But I also found multiple explanations of GML, the Geography Markup Language, where I would have expected just a single reference to the entry on GML.

Desktop reference
Possibly due to the academic set-up of the book (or my own ignorance), some entries were hard to find. Look, for example, for information on GPS. No text entry is found but there is a cross-reference to five other entries. If we then look for Global Positioning System there is only a single cross reference. None of the entries mentioned, however, gives any relevant information on the GPS system itself.

Another example: map projections. One would think that this is a GIS essential. But after searching for entries on "map projections", chart projections" and "geodesy", none of which was available, I just started browsing. After some time I found an entry marked "Mathematical Foundations of GIS" containing basically two items, a single paragraph on the GPS system and multiple pages dedicated to geodesy. One small detail is that the entry where I finally found the information on GPS was not mentioned under the entries for either GPS or Global Positioning System.

Conclusion
The book is aimed at academic users but could also have been very useful for other GIS users. The price is a potential hurdle, but is usually overcome by buying the book for the greater good of some company (much cheaper than sending the staff out on training). Although the book seems complete, the information is very hard to access due to the way the book is set up. Perhaps this is improved upon with the online version, but I personally feel that the price for the print version is too steep when compared to the amount of use it will have in everyday life.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
hydrografie | Aug 3, 2009 |

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Œuvres
6
Membres
42
Popularité
#357,757
Évaluation
2.0
Critiques
1
ISBN
18
Langues
1