29. Using GIS for Historical Data Rescue and Digitalization in Libraries: The 1961 & 1971 Canadian Census Subdivisions & Counties Project

Digitization of massive volumes of print publications held in libraries and archives contains valuable historical government information such as embedded facts, figures, data, tables, maps, reports, documentation, code, and more. Over the past two decades, various projects have undertaken large-scale ‘digitalization’ of historical, pre-digital Censuses of Canada. For the Census of Canada modern era, there are two main gaps that remain for the 1961 and 1971 Censuses corresponding to local governments (municipalities), counties, and equivalent units in municipally unincorporated areas. These units are called Census Subdivisions (CSDs) and are nested within Census Divisions (CDs). Extraction of census data and boundaries using geographic information systems (GIS) supports data rescue and enables broad discovery and reuse across research disciplines. This poster will outline a project to ‘digitalize’ the CSD boundaries for 1961 and 1971 using the best available reference materials and leveraging previous and newly digitized sources, including digitized print source maps, and then, using GIS to draw and assign each CSD polygon with the appropriate ID code and name to match with available data sources.