Project: British Historical Censuses (esp. 1881)


(A) Background, personnel and funding

Q. Name of project

Historical Censuses and Surveys Research Group - mostly focus on the mapping of the 1881 census material for Great Britain.

Q. Name of project IN ENGLISH

Historical Censuses and Surveys Research Group.

Q. Principal researcher(s)

Kevin Schurer, Matthew Woollard (and previously) Raivo Ruusalepp, Mark Allen, and Wayne Diamond.

Q. Who can/should be contacted now, and how?

Name:

K. Schurer (Director, UK Data Archive)

Postal Address:

Data Archive, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK

E-mail Address:

schurer@essex.ac.uk

Web site:

 

Q. When did research begin?

1996

Q. Is the project still in existence?

Yes

Q: What institution(s) was/is the project based in?

Department of History, University of Essex. GIS constructed in collaboration with QMW, London, and University of Edinburgh.

Q: How many people were/are employed, and for how long? Were these people recruited specially for the project, or were they already employed by the institution(s)?

On construction of GIS - 2 at QMW; 1 at Edinburgh. On related research 3 at Essex.

Q: How much did the project cost?

Currently some £350k

Q: Who paid for the project?

Leverhulme Trust; ESRC; University of Essex.

Q: If the project is still underway, has all necessary funding to complete the project been raised?

No - as a multi-task research project no clear end in view. Further research will be undertaken in line with available funds.

Q: How easy has it been to raise the money?

A major undertaking.

Q: Other than raising the money, what are the biggest problems your project has faced?

Geography!

Q: How likely is it that further funding might be raised within your country for a collaborative European project?

A project application has been submitted to the EU by the DDA, however, the further research priority is for collaboration with North America. Some funds available, further funds being sought.


(B) Project Goals

Q: What geographical area is covered by the project? What is the MODERN legal status of this area?

Great Britain.

Q: Does the project aim to: (a) Reconstruct boundaries at a single date (b) Reconstruct boundaries at a series of dates (c) Construct a continuous record of changing boundaries over a period

Current focus on parish boundaries in 1881. However, in future other years may be included as possible.

Q: What is the earliest date covered by the project?

1881 for parishes. But county maps are used for 1851 onwards.

Q: What is the latest date covered by the project?

1996.

Q: What systems of units are included?

Parishes. (But also from these Registration sub-districts and Registrations Districts and Registration Counties). For later data postcodes have been mapped.

Q: What is the project's final product?

Research publications. Also worth noting that an interactive display has been produced which includes 70,000 maps of surname distributions for 1996 and 1881.

Q: What other publications has your project produced?

No specific papers on GIS.


(C) Sources

Q: What base map is/was used to record the information? When was it created, and by whom? Is it published or in an archive?

There is no base map for 1881. Back-projected using textual change data from 1991.

Q: What scale was this base map on?

1:126,720 (I think!)

Q: If the base map was not already in digital form and your project created a digital version, how was this done?

Digitisation done by QMW and Edinburgh.

Q: If your project constructed a record of boundary CHANGES, what sources of information were used? How was this information gathered?

Information at PRO.

Q: What other maps besides the base map were used? When were they created, and by whom? What scale were they on? What boundaries did they show? How reliable are they?

n/A

Q: Did your project make any use of DESCRIPTIONS of boundaries? Who created these? Where are they preserved? What problems did you have converting this information into lines on maps?

--

(D) End Product

(D2) Geographical Information Systems

Q: What software was used?

For research - MapInfo

Q: What were your reasons for your choice of software? If you started again now, would you use the same software?

Ease of use; price; flexibility.

Q: Describe the data files making up the final system:

Basic form in .mid and .mif files.

Q: What map projection is used?

n/a

Q: Assess the overall accuracy of your digital mapping:

High.

Q: From your existing experience, what methodological recommendations do you have for a larger collaborative project?

Make sure that the various teams talk to each other on a regular basis! Have clear goals!

(D3) Other end products

Q: If the end-product is neither a traditional publication or a GIS, please describe it?

See above, section B.


(E) Linked Gazetteers and other Meta-Data

Q: What place-names are built-in to your mapping? Is each point/area (node/polgon) labelled with a single name, or is there some system for linking to different versions of names?

Standard parish placenames, and related sub-districts, registration districts and counties for 1881.

Q: Does the history/linguistic geography of your area raise special problems with naming places?

No. Problem is variation of spellings. In raw source data there are some 2.5 million varients spellings of parish names which have to be standardised to some 16k parishes.

Q: What sources have you used to research place- and area-names for use in your system?

Contemporary gazetteers. Local knowledge.

Q: Are there any quite separate projects concerned with the history of place names or of administrative hierarchies in your area? If so, please give details? Are they using computers? Are they aiming to make their results available on-line?

Ask Humphrey. There is a new HDS project that will investigate extisting gazetteers.

(F) Preservation, Dissemination and Intellectual Property Issues

Q: Was the GIS/digital resource constructed for use by its creators ONLY, or was it intended for wider use?

Wider use.

Q: Are you willing to make it available for use by others?

Yes.

Q: Are you willing to make it available for free, or for distribution costs only? If not, what plans have you for commercial distribution?

Free.

Q: Is the resource available NOW? If so, how and from where?

No. Parish level GIS still has a number of known errors in it and some areas are incomplete, especially London and other large towns.

Q: Are there any limitations on access?

As UKBorders

Q: What file format or file formats is the resource available in?

As gues we would make .mid and .mif versions, with related access mdb.

Q: If the resource is available from the researcher/project that created it, what plans are there for distribution after the project ends/the researcher retires?

Use Data Archive/History Data Service

Q: What plans are there for updating the data files for use with more recent versions of software?

None at present.

Q: What plans are there for updating the data files to include the results of more recent historical research?

Upgrading ongoing at present.

Q: Do you own all intellectual property rights in the resource created by your project? If not, what other rights exist, and who do they belong to? What limitations have they imposed?

GIS paid for by Essex but constructed with QMW and Edinburgh.

Q: How have Intellectual Property Rights issues limited your project?

Have not to date.


© Kevin Schurer (Colchester, May 2000)

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