Canada Census Details Error? Microfilm No. is called "Place of Residence"

Question

Don't know if anyone has noticed this, but when you are looking at a census document on LAC, the transcription for your ancestor contains the details of what was entered by the enumerator as well as LAC  info to locate the document. There is an item in the details called "Place of Residence" that contains a reference number. This number is actually the Microfilm Number. I have sent off a message to LAC notifying them of this error in description but don't know if they are looking at correcting that. If I was new to searching on LAC I would not  know that the reference number for "Place of Residence" is actually the Microfilm number. But perhaps they are replacing that with the "Image Number" that is now also listed. Anyway, it is very confusing and they are silent on this to date. Perhaps someone here has an answer?

Comments

I see what you mean. This seems to be something that is only on the new style LAC site and was called "Microfilm" on the old records.

For example here is an old style record:

https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/1901/Pages/item.aspx?itemid=31526

and here is the same record on the new site:

https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/home/record?app=census&IdNumber=33497857

The latter has: "Place of residence: T-6430" while the former has: "Microfilm: T-6430"

WikiTree Sourcer now supports the LAC site. It only supports the new style but will help you find the new record from the old style record. It doesn't currently use that "Place of Residence" field in its citations.

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Thanks, I use my own format for LAC citations. Have no issue finding the records, been using their site for over a decade now. The old style records are retired once the data for that record makes the transition. Then the search help for the old record on the new site will also be gone. Some of mine have already been removed before I had a chance to do the link update. Thankfully I have good citations. I use the info in them on the new site search page, it finds them.   The issue I think with LAC using something like "Place of Residence" - which by the way is not included in the search boxes- is that people who don't know about the microfilm numbers wont recognize it (or know what it is for) and so wont have that info in their citation. Kind of a big hiccup for LAC, not sure what they are thinking with this. 

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By the way, your sourcer can search across multiple years for records, but how does it deal with the spelling variations? LAC records wont appear if the spelling varies from what a person typed in the search box unless you use the wild card feature. And even then its not fool proof depending on where you place the wild card in the name your searching

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I don't add all the film numbering etc when I use census records, I go with  ''(link) BAC-LAC, Collections Canada, Recensement (year) Census, district # (name), sub-district (name), page #, lines _ - _. ''.   That way the actual pertinent data showing on the record to locate it again is all present.  Film numbering and ''individual'' numbering are all subject to change.  Computer programmers regularly sell them ''new / improved'' systems.  My brother used to work for the government, and I've heard some horror stories of computer disasters over the years.

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Yes that's true about the item numbers, and potentially the microfilm numbers though they didn't change them this time. I do include the microfilm number as it is searchable, but if it did change the rest of the citation is there with name, age, birth date, District/Sub Dist. etc. Your Sourcer application is so helpful for our wikitreer's, especially if they are new to all this! Thank you for what you do!

Answer 1

I actually received an answer from LAC on this. They say its a small bug in the database which has been brought to the programmers attention for investigation. So maybe at some point they will fix that.