Ever have a friend or colleague ask you to teach him or her GIS?   Have you guiltily told the person to just try the software tutorial, read a book, or go online to find some GIS examples, knowing that a brief but beefy introduction would at least get the ball rolling, but unable to spend several hours imparting your wisdom?  The Vermont Center for Geographic Information has put out  a concise report on GIS called GIS: Helping Vermonters Visualize Choice.  The document is available for download (it is a PDF file) at: http://www.vcgi.org/commres/publications/intro_gis.pdf.

Topics include questions to ask before investing in a GIS, whether to hire someone or do GIS yourself, hardware and software requirements, finding different types of data, and specifics about data types and metadata.  It covers the very basics and could be quite useful as an initiation to GIS - check it out!