£1m grant to link 60 years of census data

UK-- The University of Essex's history department and the UK Data Archive have won a £1m grant from the Economic and Social Research Council to bring together census data for the period 1851-1911.

In recent years various public and private bodies have created computerised versions of censuses held in that 60-year period. The plan is to bring them together to build a new resource for researchers looking into topics such as human geography, social and economic history and health studies.

The university says the Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) project will be the largest collection of its kind in the world.

“Bringing all the existing computerised versions of these censuses together will completely transform our ability to research this period,” said Kevin Schürer, director of the Data Archive, who is leading the project.

Records from the 1911 census of England and Wales were made available online today. More records will come online in the coming months, and “sensitive” information will only be made available in 2012, in line with the 100-year rule.

Author: Robert Bain