The following is information I received in an email from Lisa Tremblay-Goodyer, Director, Reference Services, Public Services Branch, Library and Archives Canada.
Online services to the public continue to be available through the website and by telephone at 1-866-578-7777 (toll-free in Canada and the United States). Orientation, reference and genealogy teams have continued to be active in helping researchers with navigating our website and advancing research via digital collections.
This “opportunity” has been used to tackle various projects with an aim toward improving access to LAC’s collection: research guides, linking of digitized images of the collection to our online descriptions, renewal of webpages. As an example, the Reproduction Web section has been redesigned and is now called Copy services. It was restructured to, hopefully, make it easier for clients to find the information they need with regard to our online services (Home> Services for the Public > Copy services at LAC). The Collection Search tool is improved by adding a new and improved viewer to ease access to LAC’s collection of digitized material.
For now, all public service points and consultation rooms are and will remain closed until further notice, and Copy services are also suspended. There's no official reopening date to announce yet, currently planning underway for how and when gradual reopening of our service points across Canada will occur. It is a complex process, and the health and safety of employees and users are key concerns.
COVID-19: Latest update for LAC’s public services and programming: https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/news/Pages/2020/service-points-closed.aspx
John, I used LAC's website yesterday to do some searching in the First World War Personeel database and the site was extremely slow. If LAC is getting more traffic on their website maybe they need to look at acquiring more bandwith to support it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this info John. I have been trying to access WWI military documents all morning and cannot get in. Again -- bandwidth may be the issue, but since I cannot get into LAC site to ask, it's hard to let them know that they have a problem!
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