Measuring 'the quantum of happiness': ensuring access to the first ( second) Statistical Account

When setting out to assess 'the quantum of happiness' in the late 18th Century, Sir John Sinclair, child of the Scottish Enlightenment and the first Secretary of the (British) Board of Agriculture, was the first to use the term statistics in its modern sense. His survey of 166 queries to each of the church ministers in the 938 parishes resulted in two Statistical Accounts of Scotland. The first covered the 1790s and the second ('New') covered 1830s; together they represent the best contemporary 'repeat survey' of life at the beginning of the first industrial nation: topics include wealth, class and poverty, climate, agriculture, fishing and wildlife; population, schools, and the moral health of the people. With the formation of the British State underway, the contrast in the presentation of numerical information in text and as tables in the two Accounts serves as a reminder that Sinclair can be credited with the foundations of the 'Blue Book' and of the tradition of 'official statistics' adopted widely today. Just over two hundred years later, in 1996, Henry Heaney (former Librarian of the University of Glasgow) secured support to fund a digitisation plan to protect the relatively rare and fragile volumes of the Statistical Accounts, which had become regarded as a key resource, and agreement that EDINA set up means to access the scanned pages. There followed subsequent keying of text, experimentation with cross-sectoral 'ownership', with name entity extraction from text and use of GIS, as well as focus on maintaining and developing access to a 'national treasure'. A revision of the user interface to a service, accessed by scholars, genealogists and the Scottish Diaspora world-wide, will be available as part of the presentation.