JISC

Overview

The Online historical population reports project will deliver 200,000 pages of population reports relating to the demography, economy and sociology of the British Isles published between 1801 and 1937. 600 volumes of Census reports representing over 200,000 pages and a hundred years of population growth – from 9 million people in 1801 to more than 40 million by 1901. The project will give users free access to historical material that is currently widely dispersed in books and microforms across the UK. Reports relate to the demography, economy and sociology of the British Isles between 1801 and 1937.

The project

Delivering a significant new resource to the entire collection of published census reports for the British Isles, all registration reports for England, Scotland and Wales and a selection of ancillary material published before the Second World War are included. These statistical tables and associated enriched metadata will allow users to browse, search and download new primary e-resources. The material exists in over 600 volumes, many of which are brittle or disintegrating, or on poorly indexed microfiche. This has resulted in significant under-use. There is enormous potential for the resource to be used in the teaching of local history, and to encourage the development of new lines of historical enquiry and methodologies. Seemingly insignificant material can give clues to wider trends in rural depopulation or the development of certain geographical areas, while the records of births, marriages and deaths, aggregated for each administrative unit of the UK, reflect the ebb and flow of human lives.

The Census prefaces, which offer insight into the social construction of statistics and their contemporaneous interpretation, are also being digitised. Researchers will be able to search these texts and many of the tabular statistics will be available in machine-readable form for download and manipulation. AHDS History is also collaborating with the National Archives to enhance the resource with many thousands of images of administrative material, maps and other archival sources.

The Arts and Humanities Data Service History will also produce a hundred historical essays which will be mounted on the website to provide a gentle introduction to the use of population statistics in research. These articles include both historical and interpretative material, tracing some of the main themes in the resource, explaining the terminology and supplying the biographical background of the key figures from history involved in the collation of these data, including the Registrar General and his statistical superintendents.

The content

The project will include the digitisation of approximately 600 volumes of census reports relating to the whole of the British Isles as well as the reports of the Registrars-General of England and Scotland, covering the period from 1801 through to 1933, along with a selection of associated material in The National Archives (TNA) giving insight into the administrative procedure followed in the taking of the census, and the collection of registration material. Additional historical essays and related legislative material will also be included within the final resource.

The process

All textual material in the reports is undergoing optical character recognition (OCR) in order to provide immediate access to any page through search terms. The database behind the site is being designed to allow users to pull discrete sections of information from a substantial body of material. Considerable volumes of metadata created for each report will allow for flexibility of access points and will support both browsing and precision searching.

The future

AHDS History is inviting feedback to their demonstrator site at www.histpop.org in order to incorporate recommendations into the next phase of the development cycle. The full service will commence in January 2007.