An important objective in developing this Guide has been to support a number of international initiatives in spatial literacy and geographic information science — of which the UK ‘Spatial Literacy in Teaching’ (SPLINT) programme, the US National Academies ‘Beyond Mapping’ and Learning to think spatially initiatives, and the AAG/UCGIS Geographic Information Science and Technology “Book of Knowledge” (BoK) are currently the most prominent.

The formats in which this Guide is available make it accessible to a wide range of readers in education and the professions, and are amenable to frequent updating. We very much view the future development of the Guide as a project for the geospatial community that is never likely to be ‘complete’ ― a more accurate title might have been ‘Geospatial analysis: towards a comprehensive guide to principles, techniques and software tools’! To this end, we very much welcome suggestions as to topics that are missing from this current version of the Guide, as well as corrections to any errors readers may find.

These, together with any other comments, should be emailed to the authors via the web site, www.spatialanalysisonline.com