1. Census of population (Canada)
Access & DISCOVERY to historical statistics & Geography

2. Census discovery & ACCESS OVERVIEW
Collections  Pre-Confederation to Present
Use (survey) & Overview
Seamlessness of access
Discovery across formats, platforms, collections, geography, born print versus born digital
Strengths and weaknesses from survey
DISCUSSION

3. Born-print collections
GOOD & BAD of discovery and access from informal survey
Most trustworthy tools:
Library catalogues, Statistics Canada publications, U of T MDL web site (e.g., scanned table of contents), Internet Archive
Gaps to discovery and access:
No complete collections at each institution, so digitization and free access online would be wonderful
Bringing all the info together in one place. Making born digital and digitized tables openly available. Converting digitized print to tabular data files. Lots of work to be done!
Proper indexes
* B2020 Established, But Only For Basic Summary Tables From What Year? 1991 or 1996?
Best Year For Statistical Table Coverage: 1996

4. Collections OVERVIEW
Pre-confederation, (Statistics of Canada, Vol.IV)
Former E-Stat statistical files covering PEI, NB, NS, QC, ON, MN, BC
Data rescues:
343 tables in Beyond 20/20 viewer format.
Queen’s
By region & date
Value-added province name changes DLI EFT (EN/FR)
DLI-EFT
/MAD_DLI_IDD_DAM/Root/census_pop_recens
Geography fairly constant (but no boundary files)
Note also, LAC has web site: from pre-confederation on

5. BORN PRINT COLLECTIONS CONT’D
Post-confederation 1871 to approximately 1986
Microdata
Canadian Century Research Infrastructure project (EN/FR): 1911, 1921, 1931, 1941, 1951
Technical :
Archived Questionnaires/Schedules and Instructions to Enumerators in EN/FR
Census microdata files still out of public domain are available in RDC’s
DDI?

6. CENSUS Collections Use by ODC members, Nov. 2016 survey
Frequent user questions: 2006, 2011 (6/7) …..
Born digital (boundary files) – standardized products + boundary files, variations NHS +
Semi-regular questions: (about half) …..
Largely born digital: includes profiles, cross-tabs, and PUMFs (multiple platforms + boundary files)
Occasional, throughout the year: (less than half) …..
Born print + born digital, Multiple platforms + weak geography boundary collections

7. Born-digital collections
Digital Starts About 1981
Many Products Started In Print
Profiles, Nation Series, Dimension Series, other Cross-tabulations (now Topic-based Tabulations)
Digital formats problematic in earlier years – Embedded In Search Interfaces*
Data archiving – reference tools, Census to Census, tables, geography … Laine Ruus, U of T Map & Data Library
Website redesign (EN) U of T MDL
Pulls together info in different places and add-on links (e.g, Internet Archives)
Western: Historical Census table searchable by Census Year / cycle (EN/FR)
Demo
| Url
Scholars Geoportall – geo-referenced boundary files back to 1971 (?)
: Statistics Canada Web Site +
Odesi/Dataverse (Small Area Geography Before 2006 And Special Topics) also includes older Basic Summary Tables (B2020)
* B2020 Established, But Only For Basic Summary Tables From What Year? 1991 or 1996?
Best Year For Statistical Table Coverage: 1996

8. BORN PRINT COLLECTIONS CONT’D
Post-confederation 1871 to approximately 1986
Statistical tables
Micro-fiched print (Microlog) (EN/FR)
Uneven access owing in part to expensiveness of subscription to fiches and indexing services (5 indexes)
MARC records
never had a standard cataloguing level. This is problematic when terms changed so much, e.g., “foreign stock”
Only Queen’s has a full collection
Benefit of CODOC classification for browsing has not fully exploited (ILS shelf browsing feature is not a prioritiy
MARC record links to Internet Archive (STC Bibliocat)
Complex organization of print
Two volume Population volumes most standard. (However, these volumes are minor in terms of total number of statistical tables, and occasional times series) U of T digitized tables of contents. Highly used. Originals of varying quality and completeness.
See notes for additional information on coverage, jurisdictions, etc.
ProFile index = Index ProFile
Publicat index
Urban Canada= Canada urbain
Canadian research index, Microlog = Index de recherche du Canada, Microlog v
Canadian research index [electronic resource]
1982-

9. Born-digital collections
GOOD & BAD of discovery and access from informal survey
Most trustworthy tools:
STC, Google searching STC web site, DLI & WDS, U of T Census pages for older censuses, Odesi, Queen’s census database,, historical census search
Gaps to discovery and access:
Have to go to more than one place
Comparability of NHS
Outdated file formats & lack of substantive documentation
Some restrictions on the U of T files to change with the new U of T MDL finding aid, web site
Needed: A tool that would allow a search by more than one variable at a time
* B2020 Established, But Only For Basic Summary Tables From What Year? 1991 or 1996?
Best Year For Statistical Table Coverage: 1996

10. Ease of User support
ODC informal survey, Nov (N=5)

11. Access challenges Comparable geography Pre-standard geography
Administrative geography most standard (when did municipalities become a thing?) Counties?
Before standard sub-municipal breakdown, it was about Wards. Maps -
Print maps distributed not standard
building digital geo-referenced census maps
The History of Canadian Cities series includes, Regina: An illustrated history, Ottawa: An illustrated history (whose forward indicates this is a project of the history division of the National Museum of Civilization with plans to cover communities such as Montreal, Halifax, Quebec City, Regina and Sherbrooke.
Includes: Calgary, Hamilton, Toronto to 1918 / Toronto since 1918, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Regina.
1970’s and 1980’s.
Note also 2005, Chinatown :
an illustrated history of the Chinese communities of Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, and Halifax

12. Continued SOME TOPIC TO TABLES ACROSS CENSUSES MANY TYPES OF TABLES:
Problematic for both print and born digital
Profiles, cross-tabulations, are found more than the 2-volume population tables
Time-series tables other special treatment tables are also uneven
STRUCTURE:
Many but not all volumes have lists of tables), the catalogues don’t give it all – some are image documents
Organization of volumes not standard and tables evolved depending on content …
Browsing the above requires knowledge of changing language (immigrants / foreign stock or methodlogy (e.G., Language definitions varied wildly until recently).
This can be helped by the baker bible

13. CENSUS Projects mentioned in survey
Data rescue
Historical census database
Further digitization and historical census years
Vince-led census statistics inventory.
New U of T MDL finding aid
AND OTHER GROUPS:
Government Information Community: Disperse Microlog and MARK records
Statistics Canada Library’s ongoing digitization project with publications.gc.ca and LAC
Amber’s work historical boundary files in GeoPortal + Geo Community
Canadian Century Research Infrastructure
Possibility of web archiving and Scholars Portal

14. Discussion “Seamless access”? Overarching questions?
Bibliography of collections, sources, platforms
What discovery metadata could we have across platforms?
Harmonized geography - Geo Community
More assessment of standards of access across collections?
Microlog and marc records – Government Information community
Canadian century research infrastructure + CFI