The initial digital version of the 1865 Census was published in the Digital Archives June 1, 1998. The Director of the National Archives had at that time taken over the rest of the data from Teleslekt, a source-transcribing project at the National Library. Jan Oldervoll at the History Department, University in Bergen, was responsible for this and later online publishings.

When published, ca. 55 % of the census was transcribed and proofread. The rest of the census was transcribed by two groups of the former Teleslekt-project: the registration groups of the Digital Archives, located in Stavanger and Voss. They completed their part of the transcribing in February 2000 so that 71 % of the material was completed. The remainding 29% was done by Registreringssentral for historiske data (RHD) in Målselv/Tromsø (125 filer – 28 %), as well as the Regional State Archives in Bergen. RHD consentrated on the counties Vestfold, Nordland, Troms and Finnmark, in addition to various parishes and cities in the rest of the country. The State Archives transcribed the census lists for Bergen and Askøy

Since June 2000, version 1 of the 1865 census has been more or less complete on the Digital Archives. There has not been any more corrections or changes on this material.

From September 2000 to 2012, the data of the 1865 census has undergone quality checks and corrections. The work has been done in the National Archives by Anne Minken, Unni Løkkebø, Frøydis Bryhn Ross and Lars Nygaard.