Statistical Accounts of Scotland: Development of the Service

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The Development of the Statistical Accounts of Scotland Service

The printed sets of the First and Second Statistical Accounts are among the most widely consulted sources in library collections both in Scotland and elsewhere where the history of Scotland is studied and researched. However, printed sets are not always widely available, and the high level of use has already taken a toll on existing sets.

The development of online technology gave the opportunity not only to protect these relatively rare and fragile volumes but also to make their contents more readily accessible.

When funding for the digitization of individual works and collections first became available in the 1990s, the unanimous choice fell naturally on the Statistical Accounts of Scotland. Led by the late Henry J. Heaney (former Librarian of the University of Glasgow), with the support of the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL), the First and Second Statistical Accounts were first digitised as scanned page images and subsequently converted into computer-searchable text. The original volumes used for scanning were provided by the University of Edinburgh and by the University of Glasgow.

The development of the online Statistical Accounts service has benefited from funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher and Further Education funding bodies. JISC supported the scanning of the 28,000 pages of text in 1998 as part of its Fast Track Digitisation Programme, and also paid for the software engineering at EDINA.

The funding of the creation of fully-searchable text was supported by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland, the Friends of Glasgow University Library and the Gannochy Trust. Additional funding has been received from the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC), and the National Library of Scotland (NLS).

The Joint Board for the Statistical Accounts of Scotland was set up by the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) in 2001 to manage and fund the development of the new Web service. The members of the Joint Board were SCURL, the National Library of Scotland (NLS), the National Archives of Scotland (NAS), the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC), the University of Glasgow, the University of Edinburgh, and EDINA.

From January 2005, EDINA assumed the sole responsibility of hosting, running and developing the Statistical Accounts of Scotland Online service.

The development of the Statistical Accounts of Scotland Online service is overseen by an Editorial Board, comprising scholars and librarians from Scotland and overseas, under the chairmanship of Dr Ann Matheson as Honorary Editor. Dr Matheson was formerly Keeper of Printed Books at the National Library of Scotland.

Acknowledgement:

Dr Ann Matheson