The article deals with an actual topic related to the research of problems in the field of historical and cultural heritage with the use of geoinformation technologies. In connection with the growing interest on the part of professional communities and tourist traffics to museum institutions, their history, the legacy that they preserve, it becomes necessary to present information about it in a compact format, reflecting the main content, and provide free access to such resource. The research is interdisciplinary in nature due to methods and technologies, first of all geoinformation systems (GIS) which bring significant prospects in the research of the humanitarian sphere. Foreign experience of applying GIS in studying the museum heritage demonstrates the high interest of the scientific community to this problem. Many projects are carried out at a high professional level with cooperation of museum staff, historians and specialists in the field of information technology. This allowed us to obtain a quality product that is convenient for use. In Russia there is an experience of learning the historical and cultural heritage with the use of GIS, but the development of museum GIS is isolated. Permanent transformation of the museum network in Russia and in regions requires the collection of complex information and its systematization for the subsequent presentation as a possible basis for studying the museums themselves, the historical and cultural heritage that they save, for the exchange of experience of museum employees, and for tourists. Creation of GIS “Museum network of the Altai Territory” provides such opportunities. Its development is carried out on the basis of a wide range of sources, with including on the database, with including museums of educational institutions, departmental museums, information about which is difficult to obtain. GIS will allow to recreate the chronology of the creation of museums by using the visualization methods, the formation of their profile groups, to assess the source material potential of museum collections at the level of expositions, and to develop tourist routes.

The article presents the analytical results of the project to reconstruct the social space of the city of Tobolsk according to the First All-Russian Population Census of 1897. The project is comprehensive, interdisciplinary in nature and is represented by a multi-stage structure. The source base of the project is represented by various types of sources and allows to recreate an objective and fairly complete model of the topography of urban space. The possibilities and effectiveness of the using of geographic information technologies in the studying of urban space are repeatedly confirmed by both foreign and domestic researchers. Many of these projects are available as interactive maps in the public domain on the Internet. The project for the reconstruction of urban space of Siberian cities at the turn of the 19th–20th c. included the development of the GIS “The population of Siberian cities at the turn of the 19th–20th c.” and the presentation of the results in the form of an interactive resource posted in the public domain with its further analysis. The city can be considered as a constantly developing phenomenon. The development of its environment is influenced by various external factors. In direct relationship with the city is its population. The objective of the project at the stage of analytical work is identification of the features and patterns of the influence of urban space on the distribution of the population, taking into account its estate, confessional, professional affiliation, i.e. the formation of the social topography of urban space. Tobolsk was chosen as a city, which preserved a significant number of written and visual sources (photographs). The results of the project showed the appropriateness of applying GIS technologies, which makes it possible to extend this experience to the study of the topography of other Siberian cities.