I am enthusiastic about new technology, but sometimes the old technology is best. One case in point is the 1911 Canadian census. This national census collected information about each inhabitant of the country that is critical to genealogists. The information included place of habitation, marital status, age, place of birth, religion, occupation, education, and more. It covered the nine provinces and two territories that were then part of the Confederation.
I am sure this created a lot of paper, and the storage space required must have been considerable. In 1955 a bill was passed, authorizing the conversion of the paper records to the best technology of the day: microfilm.
The microfilming of these records was not of consistent quality, and not all of the images on the microfilms are decipherable. Unfortunately, the paper records were destroyed soon after the microfilm conversion was completed.
Images of the 1911 census records were released about three weeks ago. (See my earlier article.) Sadly, some of the images are unreadable. Had the paper records been preserved, this would be a trivial problem.
There is no recourse when the only existing image of a record is unreadable.
You can see the 1911 Canadian census images, whatever the condition, at: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/1911/index-e.html
