| Summary: | In 1901 Anders N. Kiaer, the Director of Norway's Central Office of Statistics (now Statistics Norway) urged the holding of censuses in as many countries as possible under the slogan 'Censuses the world over'. As we have entered a new millennium it is appropriate to take stock, in order to see the extent to which his proposal has been realized, and the extent to which computers have enabled comparative research across national boundaries to be carried out. The paper begins with a history of census-taking particularly in Scandinavia, a survey of those countries which in recent years have stopped taking the traditional census, and then looks at how information technology has been applied to the census manuscripts of selected countries. It then goes on to describe current projects aimed at standardizing the format of censuses from several countries so as to facilitate comparative research in the fields of social history, demography and economics. Ethical aspects of this kind of data, especially methods devised to protect the privacy of individuals are also discussed.
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