A blog post earlier this year noted that the Ottawa Public Library has subscribed to Early Canadiana Online. I also noted some problems that I hoped were temporary.
It's taken a while but ECO, which those with a OPL card can access from home, now seems to be working well.
ECO claims "the most complete set of full-text historical content about Canada, including books, magazines and government documents." Of interest for genealogy it has " voter’s lists, eulogies, directories and gazettes, biographies, civil service lists, published diaries, church magazines and pamphlets, militia lists, publications from professional and trade societies, school publications, and more."
The Ottawa Branch OGS computer group trialed it on Saturday. It worked well once you find it. Unfortunately the OPL website does a good job of hiding their databases. Try searching "Early Canadiana Online" from the front page with the website radio button selected.
The computer found group response from the site was fairly quick. Often the page number(s) on which the search terms occur are listed. Sometimes not. You can also down load the whole document as a pdf and search that which will highlight the search term in the text.
Naturally, as with all OCRd documents, expect occurrences to be missed and some false hits found.
Worth a try. Some other public libraries, including Toronto, also offer ECO.
Sounds interesting. Can a Canada researcher from the states get a library card?
ReplyDeleteSeriously We just found out my husband's great-great grandfather was born in Canada. We think he might have been French Canadian. What are some good reads to learn more about the area and people so I have a basis to start researching. His name is Basile Joyal. The only place we have found the surname is Quebec. We think he was born about 1800-1810. We do know he married 18 Apr 1836 in St Clair County, Illinois.