A genealogist recently expressed his impatience with what he saw as the lack of progress in Library and Archives Canada’s (LAC) project to digitize 640,000 WWI service files.
The comment was made after LAC announced last week it had digitized service files up to and including the name Hunt. The gentleman wrote that the digitization project had moved rather quickly until it reached the letter H. Then, he claimed, it took four months to go through the Hs. (He is waiting for the letters J and K.)
LAC explains
LAC’s reply to the gentleman about why it has taken so long to digitize the files of soldiers whose names begin with H will perhaps help others who are waiting to proceed to another letter of the alphabet.
“The digitization team hasn’t slowed down, it’s just the way the names are distributed alphabetically. About 7% of the entire collection’s surnames start with the letter ‘H,’ contained in 776 boxes with approximately 42,000 individual soldiers files. By comparison, the letter ‘F’ is contained in 376 boxes with around 20,000 files – which is less than half the H’s.”
Here’s the good news-bad news from LAC. The good news is they have already started scanning the Js and they should start appearing online next month. The bad news (for some) is, “The next big letters are L, M and S.”
At this rate, it will take a year just to get through the Mc and Mac surnames. lol
Well, I already have my ‘S’ files. 🙂 Anyone can understand there is some impatience though. At least all the files that can be are being digitized and will be available free on-line. (The real issue is how long it took to even start this project, but I don’t think we can blame that all on Library and Archives Canada.)