Digital Imperial Statistics – Digitisation of the Statistics of the German Reich – Alte Folge – (1873-1883)

The project “Digitisation of the Statistics of the German Reich [A.F.] 1873-1883]” is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It aims to make statistical material, which so far exists only in print, available on the internet according to Open Access principles. These statistics will be offered as image files in Portable Document Format (PDF) as well as in formats that can be processed with spreadsheets. The necessary procedure will be developed and field-tested using the “Alte Folge (old sequence)” of the “Statistics of the German Reich” as a showcase.

The project will establish the prerequisites for the digitisation of historical statistical material in adequate form, its presentation online and its utilisation for reprocessing. Once a prototypical procedure for the digitisation of historical statistics has been field-tested in this pilot scheme, it can provide the template for mass digitisation of historical statistics.

The unsystematical approach to the original publication of the “Statistics of the German Reich” renders them difficult to use even today. This digitisation project will simplify the use of this particular source. Tables of contents will be searchable online. The contents will be indexed additionally with a thematically arranged register. The image files will be converted into full-text digital objects in order to generate downloadable files and to offer full-text search. The ultimate goal is to provide researchers with options for comfortable downloads of each individual table for subsequent use in their own computations. Detailed metadata will be generated by the project which will alllow pinpoint searches for particular data series and thus enable critical analysis of the “Statistics of the German Reich”.

The digitisation of the “Statistics of the German Reich” opens up an easily accessible pool of relevant data from official statistics between 1873 and 1883 for studies in economics as well as economic and social history. Digitisation as image will provide better access to the “Statistics of the German Reich”; full text capture and the indexation of tables will open up entirely new applications.