Quebec Archives sees huge increase in online traffic

Last year, the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) saw a 40 percent increase in online traffic on its site, BAnQ numérique (Digital BAnQ) — a total of 2.6 million visits.

For the same period, the number of unique users increased by more than 50 percent.

These statistics should be very encouraging for BAnQ, its archivists and staff, as well as for genealogists and historians who research digitized records.

Looking at it from a budgetary perspective, if the provincial government sees that large numbers of people are using BAnQ’s online archival collection, it will be more likely to continue providing financial support.

If few use it, BAnQ could find itself subject to budget cuts.

In 2018, visitors to the website downloaded more than 800,000 Quebec heritage documents, an increase of 65 percent, which provides tangible evidence there is significant interest in BAnQ’s historical records.

Historical records
BAnQ has uploaded to its website more than five million digitized heritage documents, including magazines and newspapers, photos and other images, maps and plans, musical scores, and videos.

The Quebec Archives said it has been increasing the visibility of its holdings as part of Quebec’s Digital Cultural Plan (Plan culturel numérique du Québec), launched in 2015, by digitizing more and more historical records.

It has also made available more than 210,000 e-books and more than 200 external digital resources, such as magazines, newspapers, and music, for which BAnQ pays the subscription.

Among the most consulted collections on BAnQ numérique in 2018 were:

• Newspapers, with the most popular being Le Devoir (Montreal), The Official Gazette of Quebec, Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières), La Patrie (Montreal), La Presse (Montreal), and Le Soleil (Quebec City);
• Maps and plans, postcards, illustrations in magazines and newspapers, and posters;
• Archival fonds, including the Point du Jour aerial photography fonds, the photographer Antoine Desilets fonds, the Ministry of Culture and Communications fonds and the Ministry of Land and Forests fonds; and
• Magazines, including Télé-radiomonde, Croc, ICI Radio-Canada, L’Action nationale, and Le Bulletin des recherches historiques.