93 
MAPPING 
DATA 
CAPTURE 
DATA 
MANIPULATION 
—is**- 
STRUCTURED 
DATABASE 
INFORMATION 
OUTPUT 
(MAP) 
USERS 
APPLICATIONS 
FIGURE 1: The Bi-directional Nature of LIS/G1S 
More recently this unidirectional mapping 
process has become bidirectional (see 
Figure 1) as users of maps and related 
products have started playing a more 
active role. Although there is still a 
demand for the final map product, there is 
an increasing interest in the database that 
is created in the digital mapping process. 
Ultimately the user community is not so 
much interested in a map product as it is 
in the spatial information that is conveyed 
through this medium. This has widened 
the scope of LIS/GIS considerably since 
we must now incorporate the user 
community and its needs. In this way we 
are shifting from a supply-driven, 
technologically-controlled environment to 
one which is demand-driven and oriented 
towards problem-solving. 
While this technology is playing a role in 
defining our technical capabilities, this 
would have no value if there were not a 
concomitant demand for the resulting 
information. Many of the problems that 
are being faced by society today—soil 
erosion (desertification), water and air 
pollution, infrastructure maintenance, 
siting of hazardous and solid waste sites, 
protection of endangered species, third 
world poverty, etc.— can only be solved 
or alleviated if we bring together a variety 
of information and knowledge from a 
number of different sources' and 
disciplines. 
With increasing concerns about the 
environment (evidenced in part by the 
emergence of “green” parties) and related 
problems like the “greenhouse effect”, 
there will be an increasing demand for 
approaches that are problem-oriented as 
opposed to those that are rigidly divided 
on disciplinary grounds. For example, in 
an article in Issues in Science and 
Technology Schneider (1988) lists the 
following elements as being crucial to 
addressing the greenhouse effect: 
behavioral assumptions (estimating future 
pollution levels); carbon cycle response; 
global climatic response; regional climatic 
response; physical and ecological im 
pacts; economic, social and political 
inputs; and policy responses. Clearly 
these elements of the problem cannot be 
addressed from the narrow perspective of 
one or two disciplines. 
Schneider (1988) argues for an 
interdisciplinary (as opposed to a 
multidisciplinary) approach that is 
oriented around a specific problem area. 
To achieve this, he advocates the addition 
of “courses and programs that show 
graduates and undergraduates how to 
approach complex, multidisciplinary 
problems, and how to work in teams. At 
the graduate level, students should be 
encouraged to look beyond a single field 
of specialization” (p. 98). This approach 
is being following by several of the 
LIS/GIS programs at The Ohio State 
University (described in the latter part of 
this paper). 
In the specific context of LIS/GIS, it 
seems that what we are attempting to do 
is reassemble a complete “picture” of the 
human and natural landscape, in the past 
the trend has been to cater to disciplinary 
specialists by allocating different pieces 
of this landscape to such specialists as 
hydrologists, soil scientists, geologists, 
and others. Now we are realizing that the 
only way we can address many of 
today’s important problems is to 
reconsolidate this situation. It is no 
coincidence that many of the leaders in 
GIS design and development have come 
from a landscape architecture background