About a year and a half ago the INTAS-project "Technologies, skills and resources for the historians of the former Soviet Union" started and Altai State University began to participate in it. We have been developing the technology of computer mapping within this project.

We began at Altai State University creating the repository of historical computer maps. This work goes on in two directions: creating the maps of the Russian Empire in early XX c., and the maps of the South-West Siberia areas. We mean that it can be methodologically fruitful because it is possible to correlate different points of view and different visions of spatial aspects of the country on the whole and of one particular region.

First of all we aimed at making the basic map for creating thematic maps on Russian History of late XIX ( early XX cc. So, it was necessary to determine the source basis for our work. To solve this problem we started searching, collecting and analysing the available historical maps. As a result, after very long searches, we turned to the Great World Table Marx( Atlas, published in 1910. We took the map of European Russia, which consisted of 16 separate sheets, its scale being 1:2600000. We use the geographical information system ATLAS*GIS, which has enormous opportunities for research. After a digitizing we are able now to create many thematical maps. Today's main problem is the creation of a full map of the Russian Empire.

The second direction is connected with a creating of repository Altai Region computer maps. Firstly we are interested a process of the Altai colonization and the foundation of population places. The item of the former settling of the present-day area of the Altai Territory continues to be of great interest for the historians. The process of the settlement, at its first stage, resembled colonisation. Then the newly-joint areas were getting involved in the general economic, political, social and cultural round of events of the Russian life and, due to that and some other reasons, the colonisation gradually transformed into the migration movement of a certain part of the population on the territory of the Altai okrug (region). Some thematical maps created by us show these processes.