20 October 2012

Survey: finding Non-Permanent Active Militia personnel at LAC

Library and Archives Canada have a new blog posting New Finding Aid Online: Non-Permanent Active Militia. It includes 8,799 lower level descriptions which appear to be for individuals.


LAC should be interested in how easy people find this to use. Can you find someone you might be included. Please click on the link above and search for a name of interest, perhaps one in which you have a continuing interest even if you don't expect to find anyone by that name in this collection. Then let us know how easy or challenging you found using the facility by completing the poll below and leaving a comment.







4 comments:

Archivus said...

It is fine to have names listed, even if they are in reverse alphabetical order, but there is no "search within the results" feature. The search screen that appears at the top of the page is NOT the way to go ... I entered a name of interest and received results from all across the LAC collection! I am not sure the records have been described properly ... did these men serve during the First War as indicated, were they with the CEF, did they serve at home? It would have been helpful to have two things: one, the ability to search with the 8700 names or whatever; and two, some sample documents digitized for viewing. I don't see the point to an index of names without more context than is provided in this case.

turner said...

This is NUTS. I went over the thing twice and still could not figure out how to restrict the records located to those "lower level descriptions." I even tried limiting it by "between dates" and had no idea if I was even doing that right. The only way it would work was by clicking on the "1910's" limits, and that still gave me all sorts of unrelated stuff .... several pages that had to be reviewed separately. I could not make head nor tail of this stuff. Brenda

Anonymous said...

I don't believe it is a searchable database. It is only so called advise about the collection. It consists of the same language I find all over their website, totally technical and understood only by the creator to the website. I have always had a horrible time making my way through it.
Barb

GailD said...

This morning, these links from LAC's blog are not working. Perhaps this is a sign?...