09 May 2013

LAC Announces Updates to 1871 Census


The following is a blog post from Library and Archives Canada

"Library and Archives Canada is pleased to announce the release of a new version of the Census of Canada, 1871 database. This first general census covered the four provinces that were then part of Confederation: Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

The new version includes suggestions for corrections received from users in recent months, as well as revised district and sub-district information."
It would be helpful if such announcements would include information on the extent of the changes so we can judge whether it's worth going back and repeating previously unsuccessful searches; and also provide a list of areas where the census pages have been lost or are illegible.

2 comments:

Susan said...

Too right!

Anonymous said...

I looked at the blog post and your comment. The “reply” to your questions is full of numbers etc. but gives no hard information about what corrections have been included in the new version of the census or what changes have been made. The list of microfilm reels which is referred to certainly does not give any information about what portions of the material is illegible or missing. I have found that the responses to comments on the blog postings may come from the [Mis-] Information Branch or from LAC professional or technical staff and there seems to be no way of making sure that one’s comments actually go to someone who can give an intelligent answer. A while ago there were several comments about the very poor captions for one Flickr posting, to which the reply was that not all dates, locations or names were verifiable, although in actual fact no attempt had been made to find the correct information. Eventually I sent a list of additional information for several of the captions and this information was actually added to the posting (as well as some information from sources I suggested might be useful).