Demographical Database for Finland and Collecting the Data with a Help by HTR

Jarmo Peltola, Dr, Senior researcher, Tampere University, Faculty of Social Sciences, History

The Tampere Research Group for History of Population, Environments and Social Structures (HoPES) aims at creating historical databases on the population, living conditions and resources in Finland between the years 1750-1920. The database is divided into two sections: a population history database and a living conditions database. The databases will be built in cooperation with international and domestic partners. Our aim is to collect a comprehensive, regionally compiled population database based on the demographic history material dating to the period between 1750 and 1920. The most important sources are the church registers, the books of deaths, births, marriages and migrations. Finland had similar church registers as Sweden. Church registers offer us information about the place of residence, sex, age, marital status, profession, socio-economic status and the cause of death. We already have digitized 10, 5 million individual cases of deaths, births, marriages and migrations. The pilot area of the research is the area of the present city of Tampere (Tampere, Harju and Messukylä parishes). We have begun to use also new methods for making faster advance in data collecting. We have used Transkribus, which uses an HTR engine to read handwritten texts of books of deaths. The beginning has been encouraging.

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 Presented in Session 182. Matching, Bias and Data Development: Automated Methods for Data Collection and Record Linking Assessed