Automatic Coding of Occupations: Methods to create the Scottish Historic Population Database (SHPD)

Abstract

The Digitising Scotland project digitised 25.8 million Scottish civil registration vital events records, including digitising birth, marriages and deaths, from when records began in 1855 until 1973 (from 1974 records became digital). To use these pre-digital records effectively for large-scale full life history research, they must not only be made machine-readable, but also coded in a suitable research ready format – including the broad classification of some of the information gathered.