Foreign historiography on the problems and prospects of geoinformational systems in historical research

The paper analyzes the ways GIS-technologies are used in historical research as well as how they are presented in foreign historiography. Today's level of GIS-technologies' use allows not only to see the results of their development, but to mark the main problems and further prospects of their inclusion into historian's creative laboratory. Both strengths and weaknesses of GIS-technologies' use are shown: source presentation problems; absence or dissatisfactory state of cartographic materials; rejection of GIS by some historians, etc. The author states the prospects of the approach, which relate, in particular, to the use of Internet to spread and interchange geoinformational data.