04 January 2013

The Ottawa Journal, 1885-1980 on Ancestry

A nice start to the year in making Canadian records available online; 687,002 page images of The Ottawa Journal, 1885-1980 added to the Ancestry.ca collection.
At the moment the images can be browsed and perused much like the physical version of the paper. The images are chronologically indexed, in the early years to the half-year and later in the coverage to the month.
Some papers are not available:

1909, July-December is entirely missing.
1963, October, the original film was damaged and certain days or pages may be missing or illegible.
1970, January and May, the original film was damaged and certain days or pages may be missing or illegible.
Soon Ancestry will be launching a World Archives Project, volunteer indexing of the birth, marriage, and death notices. In the meantime a card index of births, marriages and deaths reported in the Ottawa Journal, from December 21, 1885 to January 10, 1922 is at the main branch of the Ottawa Public Library. You can also use Ontario civil registration records, available on Ancestry to 1913 for births, 1928 for marriages, and 1938 for deaths as a guide on where in the images to look. For obits use burial records for Beechwood cemetery at Ancestry. For Pinecrest and some other local area cemeteries try the Canadian Gravemarker Gallery.
You might also want to try the collection of the Ottawa Citizen, kludgy as it is, through Google at http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=QBJtjoHflPwC

These images were from microfilms donated to the City when the Journal folded and now in the collection at the City of Ottawa Archives. This is another good example of a local archives taking advantage of a partnership with a commercial organization, in this case Ancestry.ca, to make a resource more widely available without in any way taking away from the free access available at the original depository. In this case the free access is even enhanced through Ancestry Library subscriptions widely available at public libraries.

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