What is the value of using historical census data for teaching?

As transcriptions of census enumerators’ books, the 1851 and 1881 databases preserve much of the original contents and ‘flavour’ of the source, while facilitating systematic analysis.

• Since the data are more than 100 years old, it has not been necessary to anonymise the details, adding human interest.
• In most cases, details have been transcribed fully, preserving original spellings and additional details (although more standardisation has been done for the 1881 data).
• In addition, standardised or coded versions of many fields are provided, to assist analysis.
• Students can devise their own queries, and interrogate the data in more detail than is possible with published census reports.