Statistical Accounts of Scotland

We are delighted to offer an additional service to all our subscribing schools. The Statistical Accounts is a wonderful resource for education. HE and FE already have direct access through the JISC sponsored service EDINA and now Scran and EDINA have come together to offer that access to schools. Log in to Scran and click the image on the Scran front page for access or click here.

What are the Statistical Accounts?

In the 1790s, 'statistics' was a fairly new word. Sir John Sinclair, Member of Parliament for Caithness at Westminster, had heard it from the Germans. Sir John took the notion much further. He wanted a collection of information about the economic and social activities and the natural resources of Scotland. He was sure that a collection of well-ordered facts based on responses by ministers in each of the 938 parishes of Scotland to 166 queries would be a 'means of future improvement'. The result was the bound versions of two Statistical Accounts. In order to protect these relatively rare and fragile volumes and to make the information in them more accessible, it was decided to develop an online service.