The Historic 1911 Scotland’s Census Handwritten Records And Data Enhancement

The University of Edinburgh (UoE) Longitudinal Study Centre – Scotland (LSCS), has received funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to create a multidisciplinary research database from Scottish historical vital events records. This project is being delivered in collaboration with the Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB), Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis (CDDA). CDDA will provide project management with end-to-end support. The National Records of Scotland (NRS) are the record keeper and official source of demographic statistics.

UoE, in collaboration with CDDA will create and manage the UK secure infrastructure platform and will require full access (i.e., Administrator and user) to the successful supplier's Data Capture/Database Management Tool to ensure Quality Assurance and sign-off.

The 1911 Census was conducted under the Census Act (1910) which makes it a function of the Registrar General for Scotland, a role now undertaken by the Chief Executive of NRS.

University of Edinburgh wish to procure the transcription (digitisation) services to capture full details of each individual included on each image (Census return) , transcription of the hand-written information from the digital images into a digital dataset. This will involve the successful supplier providing a project-specific Data Capture/Database Management Tool, which will need to be able to be housed on the supplied secure ICT Platform, within the UK. The designed database, raw images and exiting NRS indexes must be retained within this secure intranet infrastructure system. Transcription workflow will not be permitted to leave the supplied secure environment housed within the UK.