Within the framework of a DFG-funded project, the “Statistics of the German Reich [Alte Folge] – 1873-1883” have been processed for digital use. The individual volumes have been digitised and then transformed within a webportal in a manner that allows access to individual volumes and the display of individual tables as HTML files.
The results of the project are freely accessible.
About the project
The project aimed to make statistical material, which until then existed only in print, available on the internet according to Open Access principles. These statistics were to be offered as image files in Portable Document Format (PDF) as well as in formats that can be processed with spreadsheets. A suitable procedure was developed and field-tested using the “Alte Folge (old sequence)” of the “Statistics of the German Reich” as a prototype. The characteristic of this prototype is that every table contained in the “Statistics of the German Reich” whose size exceeds half a printed page can be used by users for their own computations.
The project also provided easier access to the statistics by enabling searches in the tables of contents and by generating metadata indexing the contents.
The “Statistics of the German Reich” represent the cornerstone of official statistics in Germany. This was the first time after the foundation of the German Reich in 1871 that statistical data were collected and provided in accordance with unified criteria for all German territories within the borders of the time.
