Contemporary and Historical Census Collection (CHCC)
The JISC funded this three-year project from October 2000 as part of a major national initiative to enhance use of JISC services in learning and teaching as part of the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER). The central aim of the project was to develop the Collection of Historical and Contemporary Census Data and Related Materials (CHCC) into a major learning and teaching resource. The project sought to increase the use of the CHCC in learning and teaching by: improving accessibility to the primary data resources; developing an integrated set of learning and teaching materials; improving awareness about the contexts in which census data can be used in learning and teaching; integrating contextual materials; providing access to web-based data exploration/visualisation tools and developing resource discovery tools. The project was led by MIMAS, and the other partners were the Leeds School of Geography, the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research, the History Data Service (which is now AHDS History), the LTSN Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology and the Data Archive.
As part of the project the History Data Service were responsible for making the Historical Censuses Collection more accessible by making available online individual-level demographic data from the manuscript census enumerators' books and aggregate-level demographic data from the published census reports.
The individual-level data provides information about the name, address, relationship to the head of household, marital status, age, occupation, birthplace and disabilities of millions of individuals. At its heart is a transcription of a national sample of the 1851 census enumerators' books for Great Britain, and a transcription of the 1881 census enumerators' books for England and Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Respectively, these cover a sample of some 400,000 individuals, and the entire enumerated population of some 26 million individuals.
The aggregate-level demographic data cover a wide range of statistical tables from the published census reports and includes two major collections of aggregate-level demographic data - the Great Britain Historical Database and the Database of Irish Historical Statistics - and around forty individual-level local area studies which span several censuses and which can cover anything from a single parish to several registration districts.
To access the CHCC system click here.
Back to AHDS History Projects
Top
