Historical Business Listings from Sands & McDougall directories
Anzlic ID:
ANZVI0803005905
Custodian:
Abstract:
The Sands & McDougall dataset is for use on the Victoria Unearthed website and is available for download.
This dataset contains the business listings from selected years of the Sands & McDougall directories, a pre-cursor to the Yellow Pages.
The dataset was created by digitising the business directories that were published at approximately 10 year intervals between 1896 and 1974. The extracted information includes the business name, address and business type as listed in the Sands & McDougall directories. The extracted address information was subsequently geocoded to provide a point location that can be mapped using GIS software.
Additional information has been provided to allow the accuracy of the results to be evaluated with each record containing the data used at each stage of the data capture process; from the extraction from the directory to the final QA checks.
Search Words:
Structure
Publication Date:
09 May 2023
Dataset Status:
The complete dataset covers the entire state of Victoria. Due to the nature of the source material, the coverage is better in Metropolitan areas. Rural coverage is limited to town centres and specific years of publication.
Progress:
Completed
Access Constraint:
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY)
(
License Text
)
This view is available for use in the Victoria Unearthed instance of the MapShare sites. The information will be made available via data.gov.vic.au
Data Existence:
Metadata Name
Descriptions
Resource Name:
SANDS_MCDOUGALL_PUBLIC
Title:
Historical Business Listings from Sands & McDougall directories
Anzlic ID:
ANZVI0803005905
Custodian:
Owner:
Jurisdiction:
Victoria
Abstract:
The Sands & McDougall dataset is for use on the Victoria Unearthed website and is available for download.
This dataset contains the business listings from selected years of the Sands & McDougall directories, a pre-cursor to the Yellow Pages.
The dataset was created by digitising the business directories that were published at approximately 10 year intervals between 1896 and 1974. The extracted information includes the business name, address and business type as listed in the Sands & McDougall directories. The extracted address information was subsequently geocoded to provide a point location that can be mapped using GIS software.
Additional information has been provided to allow the accuracy of the results to be evaluated with each record containing the data used at each stage of the data capture process; from the extraction from the directory to the final QA checks.
Search Words:
Structure
Purpose:
The dataset is for display on the Victoria Unearthed website and is also provided for download.
Geographic Extent Polygon:
Geographic Bounding Box:
-34.00
141.00
150.00
-39.00
Beginning to Ending Date:
1896-01-01 - 1974-12-31
Maintainence and Update Frequency:
As needed
Stored Data Format:
Available Format(s) Types:
Positional Accuracy:
The positional accuracy of the records in this dataset is variable due to the nature of the source data. The dataset was created using an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process to extract the address and geocoding techniques to provide the position. The positional accuracy is affected by the limitations inherent with these techniques. Some issues such as changing street names, are exacerbated by the age of the records. The Sands & McDougall directories were not consistent in the amount of information captured as the business "address". In many cases, the "address" may only list the town or suburb for the business; more commonly for rural businesses. Where-ever possible, all of the available information was used in the geocoding process. The precision of each record is limited to the suburb or town centre, section of road, or a property. A percentage of records were manually verified against secondary source material to confirm the positional accuracy. A modern (July 2018) property address, street or locality as defined by the VicMap Property, Transport or Admin datasets has been captured for all records.
Attribute Accuracy:
The attribute accuracy can be highly variable. Some attributes (such as business name, address and business type) have been captured by Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The original OCR values are uncorrected and may include unprintable characters and other errors. Other data fields contain values as the record has been progressively corrected.
Logical Consistency:
Data Source:
Dataset Source: Sands and McDougall business directories. All years, except 1896, are held as digital copies by the State Library of Victoria.
Available years in this dataset: 1896, 1905, 1915, 1925, 1935, 1945, 1955, 1965, 1974.
Dataset Originality: Primary
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