LAC have a large online presence for genealogy, notably census, military, immigration and land records. We are fortunate that it's all available without charge.
Through their partnership with Canadiana.ca, other large collections of monographs, serials and government publications held by LAC are online and also available without charge.
But that's only a minor proportion of LAC's holdings, most are only available to those who can get to a LAC physical facility, which is everyone during the pandemic lockdown. Even in normal times most people have the expense of travel, accommodation and the accompanying non-productive time to access documentary heritage not online. You have to deal with opening and closing times whereas the online experience is never, well hardly ever, closed.
While many LAC holdings can't be made available online owing to access restrictions much has been opened in recent years, thanks to block review, but not yet digitized.
You perhaps have your own favourites you'd like to access online. At present mine are passenger lists for repatriated servicemen and women, and war brides, for 1945 and 1946 on microfilms C-5623 to C-5655 and C-5714 to C-5725. Very timely.
Through their feed form I sent a suggestion to LAC.
Please make available online open access microfilms C-5623 to C-5655 and C-5714 to C-5725 which include passenger lists for repatriated WW2 servicemen and women and war brides for 1945 and 1946. I understand you may choose to make these available through Canadiana.ca.Please help by also making this suggestion through the feedback form. Just cut and paste the paragraph above into the form and send it off. Only a few such suggestions should provide sufficient motivation to get it done.
If you have other suggestions, such as newspapers, don't hesitate — do it now.
Done! Took less than a minute! Lynn
ReplyDeleteWithout claiming any particular skilled knowledge of LAC pages other than previous user experience, I would just say that i have never met a more difficult site to use. So unless that is improved, putting more material on line will NOT really help much as far as I am concerned. It is as though the whole thing is aimed at "in house use " , and not the people they are solicitying to be public users.
ReplyDeleteUseful material that would useful to us would be BMDs from Alberta. Saskatchewan and Manitoba, for example. They are presently only available from private companies at $50 a throw!
Ivor Banks
I Would like to see the Quebec Notary Records not just the index, as the french site is not very useful to me!
ReplyDeleteThanks
Done! It was indeed easy. Happy to do this - hope it helps with your research, and thanks for all your work on this site; lots of fantastic help.
ReplyDeleteKC