The following is a press release written by The Generations Network, Inc., the parent company of Ancestry.com:
PROVO, Utah, March 29 -- Ancestry.ca, the largest Canadian family history website, and Canadiana.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving access to early Canadian publications, today announced a partnership to digitize and bring online nearly 300 years of Canadiana.org's early historical records spanning from the 1600s to the 1900s. The new collection includes more than 6,200 publication titles and 1.6 million pages of family histories, local histories, biographies, civil service records and other early historical documents.
As the steward of one of the greatest collections of local Canadian historical archives, Canadiana.org worked closely with professional historians and genealogists to extract records of genealogical significance from its entire archive. Through these efforts, Canadiana.org has created a new collection, Genealogy and Local History Collection to 1900, which Ancestry.ca is digitizing and making available online along with its existing and highly complementary collections such as the fully indexed 1851, 1901, 1906 and 1911 Censuses of Canada. The Genealogy and Local History Collection to 1900 is the largest family and local history collection of its kind in Canada.
"Canadiana.org is a fantastic organization working to preserve and provide access to invaluable historical data for educational and genealogical research in Canada," said Tim Sullivan, CEO, The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.ca. "We are pleased to be working with Canadiana.org to provide Canadians and others around the world with online access to these precious genealogical documents for the first time."
Highlights of the Genealogy and Local History Collection to 1900 include 150,000 names and birth dates for all civil service employees in Canada, which contains records for both houses of Parliament from 1886 to 1900. The collection also encompasses histories of churches, towns, counties and the military. A variety of legal documents are also available from court trials to voter lists.
"This is our first major collaboration with a commercial vendor to provide online access and make this unique collection of early historical documents more readily available," said John Teskey, President, Canadiana.org. "Ancestry.ca is committed to providing Canadians with enhanced tools and resources for researching their family history. We believe that a partnership of this nature will benefit all organizations and individuals interested in early Canadiana."
In tandem with the collaboration, Ancestry.ca has made a contribution of C$93,000 to Canadiana.org to provide funding for its multi-year Early Canadian Periodicals Project which is available through Early Canadiana Online (ECO), Canadiana.org's digital library.
The Genealogy and Local History Collection to 1900 will be available online through Ancestry.ca within the next year. Canadiana.org will also offer these images through its digital library, ECO at a later date, once the Periodicals Project has reached greater critical mass.
About Ancestry.ca
Ancestry.ca is the leading online site for Canadian family history records, with the first and only online collection of vital records for Ontario and the only fully indexed 1851, 1901, 1906 and 1911 Censuses of Canada. Ancestry.ca is part of The Generations Network, Inc, a leading network of family-focused interactive properties, including Ancestry.com, Ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.au, Ancestry.de, MyFamily.com, Rootsweb.com, Genealogy.com, and Family Tree Maker. The Generations Network also publishes Family Tree Maker(R) (No. 1 selling family tree software), Ancestry Magazine, over 50 book titles and numerous databases on CD-ROM. For more information on Ancestry.ca, visit http://www.ancestry.ca.About Canadiana.org
Canadiana.org is a nonprofit organization for preserving and providing access to early Canadian publications, first on microfiche and now online. First established as the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM) by Canada's research community, Canadiana.org has been dedicated to safeguarding early Canadian printed publications since 1978. The Early Canadiana Online (ECO) research database is the largest of its kind, with more than 100,000 volumes. The collection features works published from the time of the first European settlers up to the early 20th Century. The Institute is an independent, non-profit corporation, governed by a board of directors composed of distinguished Canadian scholars and directors of major research libraries. For more information on Canadiana.org, visit http://canadiana.org.
