Acting up/who's who at LAC

Marion Press, a colleague on the Library and Archives Canada Services Advisory Board, pointed out a couple of movements of people to different management positions. Quite a few changes, several on an acting basis, have occurred since the appointment of Daniel J Caron as Librarian and Archivist.

At the Assistant Deputy Minister level:

Doug Rimmer moved from ADM Programs and Services to ADM Documentary Heritage Collection Sector
Marie-Josée Martel is Acting ADM Programs and Services Sector
Zahra Pourjafar-Ziaei is Acting ADM Corporate Management Sector

Focusing on the two large components within the Programs and Services Sector:

PROGRAMS BRANCH
Donna Sianchuk is Director General, with responsibility for:
Program Planning
Hana Hrusk, Director
Public Programs and Exhibitions
Mijin Kim, Director
Web Services
Diane L Beattie, Director

SERVICES BRANCH
Alison Bullock is A/Director General, with responsibility for:
Access to Information, Privacy and Personel Records
Bill Wood, A/Director
Client Services
Robert Grandmaître, A/Director
Engagement and Coordination
Roanne Mokhtar, A/Manager
Resource Sharing and Rights Management
?

If you use LAC on-site you will be dealing with Client Services staff in:

The Canadian Genealogy Centre
Sylvie Tremblay, Chief
Consultation Services
Sylvie Robitaille, Chief
Reference Services
Marie-Josée Tolszczuk, Head

If you need to contact these people, perhaps to send compliments for a job well done, find contact information through Government Electronic Directory Services at http://sage-geds.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/cgi-bin/direct500/eng/TE?FN=index.htm

LAC departmental performance in perspective

Every year around this time a report is issued for each Canadian federal government department providing information about departmental performance and spending compared to the plans and expected results laid out in their annual departmental Reports on Plans and Priorities.

The report for Library and Archives Canada, just released, is at www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/dpr-rmr/2008-2009/index-eng.asp?acr=1493.

The report has some impressive figures. LAC is custodian of 22 million books, periodicals, newspapers, microfilms, literary texts and government publications; 167,000 metres of government and private textual records; 3 million architectural drawings, maps and plans; 25 million photographs, etc.

Focusing on the genealogy items from the report:

LAC Web traffic for genealogy purposes rose to approximately 144 million page views from 132 million in 2007–08.

Collection activity addressed demonstrated areas of interest among Canadians (e.g., expansion of online records for genealogy use).

Expanded genealogy online resources and databases generated significantly more LAC website traffic.

Re "a Canadian Digital Information Strategy" - Partnership with The Generations Network for digitization and access to federal records of interest to genealogy.

Re AMICAN - A full set of genealogical resources added to the LAC Web search functions available to Canadians.

LAC Genealogy Strategy
With support of partners, databases of genealogical importance (e.g., censuses, passenger lists, immigrants from China) were added. Page views on the LAC website rose by 62% over 2007–08, driven by the demand for genealogy materials.
Strong demand for in-person services and support to people doing family research.
Canadians are benefitting from LAC’s commitment to respond to client and citizen interest, particularly in genealogy and for education purposes, and to provide timely responses to Access to Information and Privacy requests.

There was a 26.6 percent growth of on-site visitors to the Canadian Genealogy Centre (CGC) and an increase of 75 percent in page views of our genealogy website during 2007–2008.

Comment

144 million of the 176 million total LAC page views for 2008-09, the vast majority, are for genealogical purposes. That's nearly 82%. Presumably a lot of these are displays of images of original records, censuses, passenger lists, attestation papers, etc. A substantial 7.7 million of the page views were to the Canadian Genealogy Centre website, but evidently most of the genealogical use of LAC online resources comes directly from an external partner or other referrer.

There seems to be some mix-up in the numbers. A bar graph on page 3 of the report shows the page views on the LAC website increasing from 112 million in 2007-08 to 176 million in 2008-09. That's a 57% increase, not 62% as stated.

Also, it's far from evident how LAC Web traffic for genealogy purposes could have been 132 million in 2007–08 when the total LAC page views that year were 112 million!

Although 100 million page views plus is impressive, according to alexa.com the LAC website at collectionscanada.gc.ca ranks 13th within the gc.ca domain accounting for 1.6% of the total traffic. The first three are cic.gc.ca, jobbank.gc.ca and weatheroffice.gc.ca.

According to alexa.com the whole gc.ca domain gets fewer page views than ancestry.com.

Ancestry refine refine

Ancestry.com have announced a change in the operation of their new search.

"After listening, researching and testing with members, we decided to make the hot key experience in new search the default method for refining searches.

This change will happen on Monday, November 9th, sometime during the day.

The information you enter into your original search will appear at the top left of the search results page. Clicking “Edit search” will bring up your search query allowing you to edit your search criteria."

The the full story at http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2009/11/07/refine-your-searches-in-fewer-steps-in-new-search/

I hope this doesn't mean the r for refine keystroke option goes away.

FreeBMD November update

The FreeBMD Database was last updated on Fri 6 Nov 2009 and currently contains 175,948,139 distinct records (225,358,831 total records).

Major additions for this update are 1935-41 for births, 1928 and 1932-49 for marriages, 1933 and 1936-38 for deaths.

Life by the South London river-side (1911)

Today, November 7, is the anniversary of the death of Alexander Paterson (1884-1947). Prominent in social policy and prison reform in Britain, he served during WW1 and was twice recommended for a Victoria Cross. There is more on his life and work at www.infed.org/thinkers/paterson.htm

His influential, and readable, book Across the bridges : or, Life by the South London river-side (1911) will be of interest to anyone wanting to better understand life in the area. It has recently become available through the Internet Archive at www.archive.org/details/cu31924031226008