Official - 1921 Scottish Census release delayed

[Alexander Bisset]

Well not that surprising but it’s been officially announced there will be a delay in release of the 1921 Scottish census until the latter half of 2022. So unless you were one of those that insisted it would be 20th June exactly after 100 years had past, it’s in line with having the office closed down for 15 months, that there would be a delay of a year or more.

Sad but not unexpected.

@peter it might merit a stop press update to tonight’s newsletter?

 

[peter]

Well not that surprising but it’s been officially announced there will be a delay in release of the 1921 Scottish census until the latter half of 2022. So unless you were one of those that insisted it would be 20th June exactly after 100 years had past, it’s in line with having the office closed down for 15 months, that there would be a delay of a year or more.

Sad but not unexpected.

@peter it might merit a stop press update to tonight’s newsletter?

Thanks, Alexander - will do.

 

[Stuart]

ScotlandsPeople have put out an update in their latest newsletter. In general it confirms the promise for before the end of this year, though some of the detail about progress is a bit confusing. The relevant bit says:

1921 census update

Preparations for the publication of the 1921 Scottish Census on the ScotlandsPeople website and in the ScotlandsPeople Centre towards the end of this year are well under way. In January, work began on the transcription of the index to publish the records and digital images on ScotlandsPeople. Once this is complete, a full transcription of the remaining information from approximately 4.8 million individual records will be created.

This is a large scale and complex project that involves the transcription of individual records followed by extensive quality assurance. To date we have transcribed over 3 million index entries and continue to work on the quality assurance of these while progressing with the technical preparations on the ScotlandsPeople website. As we continue to proceed with this project, we will announce its publication as far in advance as possible via our digital channels.

We appreciate how patient people have been waiting for this important release. This is a key priority for NRS and considerable resources are being devoted to ensure these records are released to the public as soon as possible.

 

[peter]

It's the lead article in my next newsletter, which is focusing on Scotland and Ireland. It doesn't affect my own research, but the further delay must be very disappointing for others, especially given how difficult and expensive it is to access the 1939 Register for Scotland.

 

[Stuart]

It means a lot more to me; it's the first time my father appears, as well a loads of his aunts and uncles and cousins leaving home.

What did you make of the wording? Taken at face value, the "transcription of the index" is well over half of the work and the main transcription phase is yet to start.

My recollection of Findmypast's description of the English census programme was that step one was scanning and conserving the sheets, which included transcribing the sheet index data and creating the indexing system to access the images and transcriptions. Step two was transcribing the personal data.

That does not match what's been said this time. 3 million index entries is too many to be just one per sheet, so have they been transcribing the "left hand side" personal data as an index first? But if all the scanning had been done beforehand, it sounds as if they have not done two-thirds of the work yet this year. Maybe those words were written some time ago!

As to whether "towards the end of this year" is a delay from "the latter half of 2022" - that depends on how you measure string, I think.

 

[peter]

It means a lot more to me; it's the first time my father appears, as well a loads of his aunts and uncles and cousins leaving home.

What did you make of the wording? Taken at face value, the "transcription of the index" is well over half of the work and the main transcription phase is yet to start.

My recollection of Findmypast's description of the English census programme was that step one was scanning and conserving the sheets, which included transcribing the sheet index data and creating the indexing system to access the images and transcriptions. Step two was transcribing the personal data.

That does not match what's been said this time. 3 million index entries is too many to be just one per sheet, so have they been transcribing the "left hand side" personal data as an index first? But if all the scanning had been done beforehand, it sounds as if they have not done two-thirds of the work yet this year. Maybe those words were written some time ago!

The way I read the announcement is that they are transcribing the data that goes into the index so that users can search the census, and then they will transcribe the rest of the information on the census form.

How the workload is split between the two processes will depend on what search fields, if any. they plan to add. I suspect none, since they didn't add any fields for the 1911 Census.

As to whether "towards the end of this year" is a delay from "the latter half of 2022" - that depends on how you measure string, I think.

Of course it's a delay - the 'latter half of 2022' started in July, and there's clearly no way they're going to publish it before October, by which time they'll be in the 4th quarter of 2022.