Revisit - Library and Archives Canada RG 8, C Series How-To

More than a decade ago, I wrote a blog post titled "Library and Archives Canada RG 8, C Series How-To." Since then, the Library and Archives Canada site (LAC) has been revised, updated, and refreshed. After a colleague mentioned that they were having challenges accessing the finding aids associated with the RG 8, C Series collections¹, I decided to check out what has changed in accessing this collection of important Canadian colonial military records.

The first big change is that the topic page, "British military and naval records," is now in the new format. That's both good and bad — and the bad definitely outweighs the good in this case. The bad is that a lot of the good stuff on how to access the digitized material has been left off the new page. Fortunately for us, the old page is archived on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine at "British military and naval records (RG 8, C series) - Introduction and index."

Normally, I'd recommend using that archived page as one's guide to accessing the digitized images and use some of the links found on the new topic page to get to the images.

However, I wanted to see if I could find the material in this collection using the current Library and Archives site only and not go to the Wayback Machine copy.

In exploring this collection, I'm going to be looking for Alexander Fraser, late corporal with the 49th Regiment of Foot, who settled in Drummond Township in what is now known as Lanark County, Ontario, Canada. He is also my 4th great-grandfather.

The first place to start on the LAC site is going to be visiting the "British Military Records."C" Series [multiple media]" collection description page.

There is a lot of stuff there. Yet for us, the important link is found at the end of the Finding aid section on that page. There we find a link to a PDF file associated with "Multiple media (Electronic) Name Index - British Military Records. C Series (90: Open)" found at https://data2.archives.ca/pdf/pdf002/p000003718.pdf. In that PDF we learn how the name index maps to the microfilms with the digitized images of the old card index.

For Alexander Fraser, it seems that I need to look at microform C-11814 since his last name should be found somewhere between "Foy, Lewis - Freer, Noah."

That microform is part of the archived "British Military and Naval Records (RG 8, C Series) - INDEX ONLY" set of microfilms found buried on the current Library and Archives Canada web site. According to the current "British military and naval records" topic page they state: "Note: these links will be only be available until the images are fully available in Collection Search." How long that will take is anyone's guess.

Of course, since Alexander Fraser is a bit of a common name, it took me a few minutes to find my Alexander Fraser.

"British Military and Naval Records (RG 8, C Series) - INDEX ONLY," index card for Alex. Fraser, Corporal of the 49th Regt, image 711 of 6381; microfilm C-11814, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa.

That "C.4." found at the bottom left corner of the digitized card isn't a microfilm number. Instead, it is a volume number and we need to drop the "C" part in the next step in order to figure out the microfilm that holds the images of the actual documents. I also need to write down that I'm going to be wanting to look for page 15 in that volume 4.

On the old LAC site there used to be a table that converted the volume numbers to microfilm reel numbers. However, that has disappear from the current "British military and naval records" topic page but it still exists on the Wayback Machine at https://webarchiveweb.wayback.bac-lac.canada.ca/web/20220707190537/https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/loyalists/Pages/rg8-num.aspx. But using that archived page would defeat my purpose of only using the current system.

So, I'm going to the sometimes frustrating² Collection search system on the Library and Archives Canada site and I want to use the Advanced search feature found at https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Home/SearchAdvanced.

I'm not going to do any name searching though. Instead I'm going to use a few of the advanced search features.

1. For the "Collection", I selected "Collections and Fonds" from their pop-up list. It's near the top of the list.
2. Next I'm going to look for "Specific terms". The first one I want to select is "Archival reference" from their pop-up list. In the box beside it I will type in "RG8-I". That's an "eye" not a "one", and there are no spaces.
3. I also need a second Specific term so I want to click on the "+" next to the box where I filled in that RG8-I.
4. In that newly added line for Specific terms, I'm going to leave the Boolean operator as "AND", and select "Volume/Box" from the pop-up list just like I did for "Archival reference". I'm going to type in that volume number I found in the index card in the text box beside it but without the "C." stuff in front. In this case it is "4".
5. I'm leaving all the other search boxes empty or at their defaults. 

Screen capture of Library and Archives Canada Collection Search advance search screen with Collection = "Collections and fonds", and Specific terms of Archival reference = "RG8-I" and Volume/Box = "4".

Finally, I clicked the Search button.

If everything works out you too will hopefully see something like this in the search results.

Screen capture of Library and Archives Canada Collection Search advance search results looking for Collection = "Collections and fonds", and Specific terms of Archival reference = "RG8-I" and Volume/Box = "4".

By the way, if you are wanting to make changes to the search, don't use the back button in your browser. Instead, click on the "Modify search" button above the search results.

The first entry looks to be what I'm looking for since the reference states:

RG8-I, Volume number: 4, Microfilm reel number: C-2608

The other item that was returned in the results list actually states that the volume number is "92/1--92/4" and the search probably picked it because it has "4" in the volume number after a slash.

I recommend that you don't click on the image that is displayed as part of the search results. Instead, click on the title of the item to be viewed, in my case it is the one referencing microfilm reel C-2608. Clicking on the image will only display the digital object viewer. However, if I click on the title I get the viewer plus descriptive stuff I might want to use to create my source citation. In this specific example, the new(ish) digital object viewer will load the PDF holding the images from RG8-I, volume 4. Be patient, this can take a few minutes for the PDF to be displayed.

Screen capture of Library and Archives Canada Digital Object Viewer for RG 8, Volume 4 with page 15 displayed.

I was able to quickly browse through the images to find the page 15 mentioned on the index card.

I can now download the PDF to my computer, it is about 51 MB is size in this case. I can then use the PDF viewer on my computer to clip the pages I want to save as JPG images for safe keeping in the folder I have for Alexander Fraser on my computer³.

One question you might be asking is, "Why didn't I use the Collection search to find that microfilm reel of the index cards?" The answer is actually fairly simple. They haven't added those microfilms in a digitized format to the new collection database. So I had to use the archived microforms page for the "British Military and Naval Records (RG 8, C Series) - INDEX ONLY".

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1. At the time I'm writing this, a number of users from non-Canadian locations are reporting getting "403 - Forbidden: Access is denied" error messages when trying to access some of the Library and Archives Canada pages. From conversations I've had with others, this might be a side effect of some security settings that LAC has put in place to prevent AI bots from scraping the content in various LAC collections. I've asked for feedback from LAC to confirm that this is the reason.

2. The Collection search is often frustrating since, if we just use the basic search, we get way too many results back and we are just overwhelmed with the hundreds or even thousands of items to look at. Yet it is a powerful search system once we figure out how to beat it into submission and use the various search filters found in the advanced search options. By the way, I'm still figuring it out.

3. Yes, I back up my genealogy files on a periodic basis to the cloud and also to USB memory sticks. I also backup my whole computer every month to an external drive that I keep disconnected except for when I'm doing my backups. Hopefully you also backup your important genealogy files.