Nearly 8000 people are needed to handle the distribution of Census documents in Scotland.
They deliver personally to every household in Scotland approximately 2,500,000 forms.
Planning for the 2001 Census started soon after the taking of the 1991 Census.
It took more than a year before the first statistics from 2001 were released.
For the first time ever householders posted back their Census forms, instead of having them collected by an Enumerator.
It took three weeks to deliver all the forms required, to high-rise flats, to lonely farmhouses, to mansions, to hostels, to hospitals, to mobile homes, and to any other type of accommodation in which people can live.
Computers scanned the completed forms and sent all the information into the statistical tables with only minimal supervision from human beings. This is the first time in the United Kingdom computers have been used this way for inputting Census data. In the past the work was done by a small army of clerical workers.
The Census in Scotland costs £3,000,000 annually - or the cost of an average Scottish Premier League footballer, or the equivalent of what is spent in the length of a football match by the Scottish Executive.
Census records for the past 100 years amounting to 25,000,000 documents, are in permanent, secure and secret storage, and other records, back to 1807, are open to the public for research, usually for family trees.
The personal information from the 2001 Census, that is people's names and addresses, will not be made public for 100 years.
The data from the 2001 Census will keep statisticians at the General Register Office for Scotland busy for the next 10 years - and then they start on the 2011 Census.
The records from past Censuses contain the names of many famous names, past and present, from HM The Queen, Sean Connery, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the golfing great, Tom Morris, whose occupation is described as 'Champion Golfer of Scotland'.
If you were born before 30 April 2001 then your name will be in the 2001 Census records.
Through the Census records you could trace your family back for more than 100 years.
