Review: The Canadian Genealogy Centre, Library and Archives Canada

Genealogy research is, for many, much more than a casual pastime. The pursuit of information about one’s ancestors continues to be made easier as more and more institutions digitize and make searchable their records on vital statistics (births, deaths, marriages), immigration, and landtitles. For this blog entry I decided to take a look at one of my home country’s foremost websites for genealogy researchers, the Canadian Genealogy Centre. The webpage is hosted by Library and Archives Canada/Bibliotheque et Archives Canada, the governmental body dedicated to the preservation of “Canada’s documentary heritage.”

The CGC’s biggest challenge is to meet the needs of seasoned and naive users alike, and its website is reflective of the difficulty inherent in this. The homepage of the CGC bombards the user with too much information. While helpful links to the site’s “Most Requested Records” and a “How to Begin” page occupy a prominent place on the homepage, many of the links are repeated across the menu bar at the top, leaving the user to wonder if both links lead to the same page, or if one is missing out on critical information by not testing both. Furthermore, because the site is in large part structured around the services provided on-site at the CGC, there is no online assistance available - not even an email address to which one can send reference questions. In fact, the “Ask a Question” link directs users back to the “How to Begin” page, and encourages questions to be submitted via the post and over the phone.
Searching the online databases for ancestors is made relatively simple through the inclusion of an “Ancestors Search” on the site’s homepage, which searches combined genealogical databases - including vital statistics, census, immigration and citizenship, military, land, and employment records. Each type of record can be searched individually, as well; each type of records has a subsidiary page offers users resources appropriate to, for example, military research, including bibliography, terminology, and external links. A wealth of information is available through the broad-coverage “Ancestors Search”; when I enter my own last name, each individual who shares it is listed along with the occurrences of his name in, for example, Land Grants or Immigration Records. From there, I can navigate to a record that tells me where the information is found (digitally and physically in the archives), which is useful for requesting copies of the documentation from the CGC.

Overall, while I find the search capabilities of the CGC to be impressive, I think that their service has a long way to go. Apart from the aforementioned issue of misdirection, there is currently no way for the site to recognize returning users, like offering a protected login and a personal account where searches could be stored. For an organization dedicated to record-keeping, this seems a gross oversight.