The County Surveys of Great Britain 1793–1817
Work has commenced on an exciting new EDINA project – County Surveys of Great Britain 1793-1817: Exploring “Considered Digitisation”.
The County Surveys of Great Britain, which were commissioned by the Board of Agriculture and overseen by Sir John Sinclair (who was also responsible for the First Statistical Account of Scotland), are the earliest surveys of their kind in the world. They recorded comprehensive information on the agriculture, rural economy and political economy of each county in Great Britain between 1793 and 1817, and provide a unique insight into the innovation and agricultural improvement during a significant period in the making of Britain as the first industrial nation.
Despite its remarkable historical interest, this resource is currently under-used because very few surveys are available in digital format and printed copies are difficult to locate and access. This 18-month project will explore how the creation of an online demonstrator hosting a virtual collection can realise the potential of the County Surveys for discovery.
The project will use an approach that it has termed “considered digitisation” by:
- Reviewing existing digital fragments of the County Surveys to assess their availability for public access, the quality of their digital image, OCR text and metadata, and their suitability for computer automated text analysis, search and retrieval
- Identifying where re-digitisation might be required to offer public domain content of sufficient quality
- Identifying sources of printed copies of the County Survey and encouraging digitisation
In due course the County Surveys will be linked from EDINA’s Statistical Accounts of Scotland online service.
