19 November 2014

LAC Puts Further CEF Service Files Online

On Tuesday Library and Archives Canada announced that 78,914 of 640,000 files are available online via the Soldiers of the First World War: 1914–1918 database. In mid-October there were 76,330 files online.
This has been a slow month, just 2,584 files added, half the anticipated rate. If continued that would see the digitization complete in 217 months, or 18 years.
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2 comments:

  1. Lynne Willoughby19 November, 2014 08:12

    The outlook is a little better if you look at the progress on the entire project. That gets it done by 2020 0r 2021. In the meantime thousands of the files are locked up so if you want to do any research on soldiers of WW1 it is virtually impossible. I think they must be embarrassed to post these numbers.

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  2. Glenn W19 November, 2014 08:43

    Confusion at LAC? Surely not. I just did a search on the "Soldiers of the First War "database - I did not enter a name or regimental number, but clicked on the box below that to indicate that I only wanted to see digitized files. The results show that approximately 110,000 files are available in that format, about one-sixth of the total. Yes, I agree that it is frustrating for anyone doing First War research. One can only hope that "production" will increase and we will see the complete digitization of the CEF records in less time that it took to fight the war.

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