This past spring, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) announced plans to cancel their interlibrary loan (ILL) program due to budget cuts. The ILL service will be coming to an end in December 2012.

Patrons have until December 10, 2012 to place any interlibrary loan requests as the office will cease doing location searches and ILL-related photocopying services on December 11.

PHR and interlibrary loan staff encourage patrons to get their requests in early prior to the December 11 deadline to ensure that they will get their materials. As of yet, staff are unsure what will be replacing LAC's ILL program and will keep patrons posted once more information is forthcoming.

--May P. Chan, Prairie History Librarian

Some of Library and Archives Canada's (LAC) vast microforms collection are being digitized for access over the Internet. Here is the list of two newly digitized collections:

* Commonwealth War Graves Registers, First World War

* Circumstances of Death Registers, First World War

Additional digitized microforms are available on the Browse by Title page and include:

* Form 30, Border Entry Records, 1919-1924

* School Files Series - 1879-1953 (RG10)

* Passenger Lists: Quebec City (1925 - 1935)

* Passenger Lists: Halifax (1925 - 1935)

Please note that these links do not take you to a fully searchable database meaning that the images are not searchable by keyword. You scroll through the images as if you are scrolling through a microfilm.

Library and Archives Canada recently launched a new database for those who may have had relatives that served in the Canadian Royal Navy or Naval Reserve from 1910-1918 or enlisted between 1919-1941.

The database will give researchers the following information: Name of Individual; Service Number; Port; Date of Birth; Occupation; Volume; and Reference. With this information, users should be able to request copies of the individual's service file.

Between 1869 and the early 1930s, over 100,000 children were sent to Canada from Great Britain during the child emigration movement. Library and Archives Canada holds multiple records in different series regarding the Home Children. In the latest update, more than 20,000 names of children, who came to Canada between 1925 and 1932, were added to the extended version. The names were extracted from passengers lists held at Library and Archives Canada.

You can find the Home Children Database (1869-1930) at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/home-children/index-e.html

Last month, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) launched a number of new online resources for genealogists. Here is a quick round-up:

• The 1916 Census of the Prairie provinces: In order to track the high rates of population growth in western Canada during the early years of the 20th century, the Canadian government called for a special census of the Prairie provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta) in 1916. You can access this information in two ways:

  * Through a database that is searchable by Province, District Name, District Number, and Sub-district Number. The database is available at: www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/census-1916/index-e.html

  * Through the research tool "microform digitization," you can browse the microfilm reels page by page. The tool is available at: www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/microform-digitization/index-e.html

• Medals, Honours and Awards database: Through this online database, researchers can access more than 113,000 references to medal registers, citation cards and records of various military awards. In addition to archival references, this research tool includes digitized images of some medal registers.

A couple of weeks ago, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) announced the launch of two new online tools to help researchers use its immigration records:

* Immigration Records Headings - transcriptions of headings of different forms used to record the names of immigrants arriving in Canada between 1865 and 1935

* Immigration Records Indexes - links to different databases and websites offering nominal indexes or digitized images of immigration records

LAC also offers a new version of the Canadian Naturalization 1915-1951 Database. During the period of 1915 and 1951, the Government of Canada published the lists of names of those naturalized subjects in the annual reports of the Secretary of State (Sessional Papers) and in the Canada Gazette. This database, produced by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal, is now searchable by name and by date.

Finally, while helping a patron decipher some abbreviations on a Canadian military record, we discover that LAC has already published a very helpful guide on this topic, List of Abbreviations Used in Military Service Files.

Last month, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) started to add digitized copies of the service files to the Soldiers of the First World War - CEF database to make them more accessible, to help preserve the originals and to avoid copying the same file more than once.

For files that have not yet been digitized, clients can order photocopies or scanned images. The cost is the same. When a photocopy or digital copy is requested, the complete file will be scanned and the digital images will be added to the database the next time it is reloaded.

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has added or updated the following databases:

Canadian Naturalization 1915-1932

The Canadian Naturalization database contains references to about 200,000 people who applied for and received status as naturalized Canadians from 1915 to 1932. During that period, the Government of Canada published the lists of names of those naturalized subjects in the annual reports of the Secretary of State (Sessional Papers) and in the Canada Gazette. This database, which covers people who came to Canada from such countries as Russia, Italy, Austria, and the United States, was produced by the Jewish Genealogical Societies of Montreal and Ottawa.

Ship Registration Index

Ship Registration is a title system for the ownership of vessels. The Ship Registration Index Database (SRI) contains more than 78,000 entries of ships registered in ports of Canada between 1787 and 1966. Through this research tool, you can obtain information about a ship such as its name, its type, its official number, the year and port of registration, where it was built, its date of construction and, in some cases, what happened to it. The database also allows you to find references for the physical registers or microfilm reels.

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Note: LAC has also updated the following pages on its Canadian Genealogy Centre (CGC) website:

* updated bibliography and topical guides including Irish & Jewish resources
* updated contact information for provincial & territorial Archives as well as genealogical societies
* First World War and Canadian Forces after 1918 pages now include contact information for armed forces of other countries
* revised guide of "Researching Your Aboriginal Ancestry at Library and Archives Canada"