Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal April 2004 Volume 2 (2)

Resources

The Statistical Accounts of Scotland

The bound volumes of the first and second Statistical Accounts are among the most widely consulted sources for the study of Scottish history in public and academic collections, but not everyone can access them easily. In order to protect these relatively rare and fragile volumes and to make the information in them more accessible, the Accounts have been developed into an online service.

The Joint Board for the Statistical Accounts of Scotland was set up several years ago to manage and fund the development of the new service. The members of the Joint Board are SCURL, the National Library of Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland, the Scottish Library and Information Council, the University of Glasgow, the University of Edinburgh, and EDINA, a JISC funded National Datacentre based at Edinburgh University.

The Accounts were first digitised as scanned page images and subsequently converted into computer-searchable text. A free service to all internet users was launched in January 2001. In October 2001, a subscription service with enhanced functionality was made available (free at the point of use) to staff, students and members of Scottish universities, colleges, public libraries, county archives and schools.

This article presents a short introduction to the Statistical Accounts themselves, an overview of the functions available within the service and how to gain access.

Scotland, Statistics and Happiness - a short introduction

Many people today think of statistics as just figures and tables. In Scotland in the 1790s, ‘statistics’ was a fairly new word. Sir John Sinclair, Member of Parliament for Caithness at Westminster, had heard it from the Germans who used it to refer to a collection of facts about the political strength of a country. The new word was very close to the word ‘state’. Sir John took the notion much further. He wanted a collection of information about the economic and social activities and the natural resources of Scotland. Known as ‘Agricultural Sir John’ for his interests in estate improvement and work for the Board of Agriculture, Sinclair had two aims in mind. In ‘Enlightenment’ Scotland, the increase in well-ordered knowledge was quite simply a good thing in itself. This was also the age of the encyclopaedia. He was sure that his collection of well-ordered facts based on responses by ministers in each of the 938 parishes of Scotland to 166 queries would form an account of ‘the quantum of happiness’ of the communities of Scotland and also be a ‘means of future improvement’. Sinclair did not aim to provide information to the government so that Scotland’s resources could be exploited in time of war. A transcript of Sir John’s Sinclair’s Questions to Ministers is available within the subscription service.

Everything from changing fashions in dress to the different attitudes to smallpox inoculation and resulting high infant mortality between the north and south of Scotland can be studied in the Statistical Account. The ministers’ responses covered topics such as agriculture, antiquities, industrial production, population and natural history, and some were long in coming back. Sir John, however, was patient and, eventually, after sending ‘Statistical Missionaries’ to hurry up late entries and a ‘final demand’ written in red ink, the 21 volumes were complete by 1799.

These books were part of a world of turnips and steam engines, of growing cities and expanding trade, of cotton mills and newly drained fields. It was no accident that ‘statistics’ was added to other new words and new meanings like ‘science’ and ‘political economy’. The Statistical Account joined Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (published in 1776) and the Encyclopaedia Britannica (first published in Edinburgh between 1768 and 1771) on the bookshelf. Many other nations, from Ireland to Switzerland followed, but few could match the disciplined and engaging clarity of Sir John and his army of ministers. These detailed parish reports provided quite extraordinary, even revolutionary, ways of looking at the world, hence their reputation as an exciting resource for historians.

In 1832, the clergy were once again asked to describe their parishes, this time by the Committee of the Society for the Sons and Daughters of the Clergy, who had benefited from sales of the first Statistical Account. It felt that the time was ripe for a new edition because of the great changes which had taken place in Scotland since the 1790s. The New Statistical Account was written mostly in the 1830s and published in parts from 1834, finally being issued as 15 volumes in 1845. So great were the changes that the Committee advertised ‘in a great measure, the Statistical Account of a new country’. Used together, the two accounts make ‘the close investigation of its actual state, industrial, social and moral’ very rewarding.

The original volumes can be consulted in the National Library of Scotland and in public and academic libraries and archives. The first two statistical accounts have been made available in digital form to make it easier for everyone to use them and allow in-depth searching and comparison. Publication of a Third Statistical Account began in 1951 and was completed in 1992.

Acknowledgements: Professor R J Morris, Professor C W J Withers (University of Edinburgh) and Professor T C Smout (University of St Andrews)

The Statistical Accounts of Scotland Online Service

The detailed reports by ministers of the Kirk make up the bulk of the Statistical Accounts. The 938 parish reports are presented alphabetically by County and Parish. Information can be accessed by selecting the relevant County and Parish. Alternatively, the complete text of both Accounts can be searched by keyword or groups of words. The Search facility allows the user to look in four areas: the General Index, Counties, Parishes and the Page text.

The page view that displays the scanned pages of the Statistical Accounts opens a new browser window.

A ‘Show Text’ feature allows users to see the transcribed text behind the digitised text; the transcribed text can be copied into other software packages. Users can download entire parishes as a .pdf file and may bookmark a citation so that the page is accessible from the user’s browser without the need to log on to the Statistical Accounts and re-run a search.

The subscription service also has access to the following additional resources:

• A transcript of Sir John’s Sinclair’s Questions to Ministers
• The digitised image and transcript of the original return for the parish of Dumfries written for the first Statistical Account.

Access

The Statistical Accounts of Scotland service is hosted at EDINA. (edina.ac.uk/stat-acc-scot/). Higher and Further Education institutions within Scotland have access through Athens authentication; public libraries have access either by IP address or username. Access for Scottish state schools is via the school’s SCRAN login (www.scran.ac.uk). Subscriptions may also be taken out by individuals, institutions of Higher and Further education and other institutions (e.g. learned societies and museums) elsewhere in the UK and overseas.

If you require further information about the Statistical Accounts service please contact the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk or 0131 650 3302.

Dr Helen Chisholm is User Support Manager, EDINA.

Information Scotland Vol. 2 (2) April 2004

Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland.