22 January 2018

New LAC Collection Search

In a brief trial I liked it.
"It" is Library and Archives Canada's new catalog search tool in beta we are invited to try.
What I liked is the ability to filter results. It's better than TNA's catalogue filter in giving a finer breakdown in the timeline. I'd prefer it if LAC gave a courser initial breakdown with the option to go finer. That's how it works in the British Newspaper Archive.
I found resources I'd previously missed. Some I expected were missing but we're informed not all items are included.
Collection Search is in beta so perfection is not to be expected.
Try it, you'll probably like it, and LAC would value feedback on any problems you encounter. They likely wouldn't mind positive comments either.

Try it from the link in the LAC Newsfeed here.

Other news from LAC is the imminent launch of a new crowdsourcing tool enabling tag, transcribe and describe items in the collection.

4 comments:

K said...

Doesn't work at my end. Site took a long time to load, and now won't let me type anything into that search box.

K said...

Turns out it was just a picture of a search box! Not funny.

K said...

I found nothing wrong the past search engines they used.

So, is this in Beta temporairily?

I typed in my surname and received 10 hits. The descriptions are just as poor as they were before, so I have no idea what records they were. I know they were not pictures, or genealogy. I think two hits were manuscripts.

I received a message on each page, that the page I am looking for is currently being worked on. Ya? Well that is the same message written on 'records' from the previous search engines. They never, ever, got done working on those 'records'.

Personally, I am interested in on-line content, because I don't go downtown anymore.
And I'm not forking over money for a copy of something - I say something because you can't tell by the description what it is. I want to see it before I buy it.

Gail B said...

rather late reply, but my infernal machine cannot locate this. I'm told "this site cannot be reached."