Digital Books
The digital books are reproductions of original statistical publications. Some minor text editing of currency symbols has been made to enable computer voice software to sensibly read these symbols.
Remember when reading historical books, the language and policies of the day may not reflect current practices. For example, in the early census material, privacy was not considered an issue. This is demonstrated by the fact that the only person who did not participate in the 1861 census is identified in the census report and described as being “silly”. Today, privacy of census information is paramount. Statistical agencies take great care to ensure that, even in light of modern technology matching techniques, personal data cannot be disclosed.
Queensland has celebrated each fifty year milestone of its proclamation (1909, 1959 and now 2009) with an “official” Queensland Government book. The 1959 publication, Triumph in the Tropics, is included below and the 1909 book, The First Fifty Years, will be added to the website when it has been digitised. Details on the 2009 publication, Made in Queensland: A New History, by Ross Fitzgerald, Lyndon Megarrity and David Symons is available from the University of Queensland Press.
In 1998 the Office of Economic and Statistical Research published a commemorative book to celebrate Queensland's one hundred years of official Queensland statistics. It is now available in a digital format.
- Census of the Colony of Queensland, 1861
- Statistical Register of Queensland, 1861
- Registration of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, Queensland, 1861
- Our First Half-Century, 1909
- Triumph in the Tropics, 1959
- Queensland Past and Present: 100 Years of Statistics, 1896-1996
These books are licensed for use under the Queensland Government Information Licensing Framework (GILF) and specifically an Attribution Creative Commons Licence has been applied to the covers.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics is also progressively digitising its census material pre-1986.
The Australian National University has been conducting a project to digitise Australia's early State censuses. The Historical Census and Colonial Data Archive (HCCDA) is a searchable archive of Australian Colonial census publications and reports. It's a sub-archive of the Australian Social Science Data Archive (ASSDA).
Last reviewed: Sep 21, 2009, Last modified: Aug 5, 2009
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