Library and Archives Canada completes digitization of entire WWI personnel files collection — 100 days before 100th anniversary of end of Great War

Congratulations to the conservators at Library and Archives Canada!

To mark the centennial of the end of the First World War and the heroic and tragic events that led up to it, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) announced today the completion of the digitization of all Canadian military personnel records from the Great War. More than 620,000 files are now available online.

Officers and members of the 26th Battalion of the Second Canadian Expeditionary Force, Saint John, New Brunswick, June 1915. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The date of the announcement is fitting. In its announcement, LAC said, “August 8, 1918, is commonly known as the beginning of “Canada’s 100 Days” — when the Canadian Corps spearheaded attacks that became known as the Battle of Amiens, a major turning point that led to victory in the Great War and the Armistice of November 11.”

To complete the digitization project, it took LAC four years of work, encompassing more than 30 million digitized images and 540 terabytes of data.

This is the biggest project LAC has undertaken. “Beginning in 2013, a team painstakingly reviewed hundreds of thousands of military files, page by page, removing pins, clips and staples of all sorts. Conservators then carefully removed the adhesive from thousands of pages, separating each one to make it easier to digitize.”

The magnitude and importance of this accomplishment should be applauded by everyone whose ancestors served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, along with every historian, every genealogist, and every Canadian — young and old.

Hats off to Dr. Guy Berthiaume, Librarian and Archivist of Canada, and his team. This calls for a huge celebration.