Anglo-Celtic Connections

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge

Researching Military History in the Canadiana Collections

MyHeritage makes a major update to Theory of Family Relativity
Here’s what MyHeritage wrote “Our team just rolled out an update to Theory of Family Relativity™, adding an impressive 103 million new theories — a 44% increase that brings the total to over 336 million.”

CKCU-FM
A belated recognition of the 50th anniversary of one of Canada’s most enduring independent media organizations, CKCU 93.1 FM. Anytime you want to listen to music from the British Isles and beyond, go to https://www.ckcufm.com/, click on demand, and check out the archives of Music From the Glen, or listen live on Sunday starting at 11:30 am.

Presentation Opportunity
A reminder that OGS is currently accepting proposals for its 2026 Virtual Conference: From Steamships to Microchips to be held June 12-14, 2026.
The deadline for presentation proposals is 1 December at https://ogs.on.ca/conference-speaker-submission-page/

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Anonymous, Bryan Cook, Darryl Bonk, Gail, Joan, Teresa, and Unknown.

This week, FMP’s military collections and newspaper archives are boosted with 2,858 new service records and over 200,000 fresh newspaper pages.

• British Royal Navy & Royal Marines Service and Pension Records, 1704–1939
  Years covered: 1842
  Records added: 1,385

• British Army Service Records, South Wales Borderers
  Years covered: 1891, 1914, 1915
  Records added: 1,473

• Newspapers
  FMP gets its newspapers from the sister site, the British Newspaper Archive. Here are the BNA additions in November. The earliest starts in 1751; most are from the second half of the 19th century.

A document dated 6 November 2025 outlines Library and Archives Canada’s strategic approach to integrating artificial intelligence into its operations. The key messages are:

• LAC embraces AI as transformative for making Canada’s documentary heritage more discoverable and accessible
• Four guiding principles: Transparency, Fairness, Human-in-the-loop, and Trust
• Three strategic pillars: (1) Making collections discoverable through enhanced metadata, (2) Building trust in information by combating misinformation, and (3) Partnering for innovation across sectors
• LAC positions itself as a responsible leader in the GLAM sector, aligning with government-wide digital transformation priorities

The Critique: All Talk, No Show

While establishing a foundational ethical framework is important and necessary, LAC’s document fails to move beyond this preliminary stage. Instead, it reads as if assembled from a corporate buzzword generator—or worse, written by the very AI it claims to be thoughtfully deploying. Here’s why it falls flat:

1. Zero concrete examples: The document mentions “pilot projects” and “concrete actions” but provides not a single specific example. What metadata was enhanced? Which handwriting recognition tool did they test? What were the results? We get platitudes about “accelerating workflows” without evidence that anything has been accelerated.

2. Principles without teeth: The four principles sound admirable until you realize they’re unfalsifiable. “Human-in-the-loop” and “Trust” mean nothing without specifics: Who reviews AI outputs? What happens when bias is detected? What are the actual protocols?

3. Strategic pillars built on air:

• Pillar One promises to “explore” and “pilot” metadata creation—but no timelines, success metrics, or examples of what they’ve actually created
• Pillar Two claims LAC combats misinformation but offers only vague “educational resources” with no description of content or reach
• Pillar Three celebrates partnerships without naming a single AI partner or collaborative achievement

4. Responsibility theatre: The repeated nods to government policies (Digital Ambition, Policy on Service and Digital, etc.) feel like box-ticking rather than meaningful accountability.

5. The irony is deafening: A document about transparency that reveals nothing. A commitment to “showing” how Canadians can engage with heritage that only tells us they’re thinking about it. The lack of self-awareness is almost impressive.

What’s actually missing:

• Specific AI tools or technologies being used or evaluated
• Measurable outcomes and lessons learned from any pilot project
• Budget allocations or resource commitments
• User testimonials or impact data
• Honest discussion of failures or limitations
• Timeline for implementation

This reads less like a position statement and more like a grant application—designed to signal virtue and alignment rather than demonstrate competence or achievement. For an institution tasked with preserving Canada’s documentary heritage, the complete absence of documentation about LAC’s own AI work is remarkably on-brand for government opacity.

And in case you’re wondering, I did use AI to assist in composing this critique.

As a service to LAC, I then asked AI to draft a likely rebuttal. Here it is, unedited.

LAC’s Likely Rebuttal

Re: Concerns Regarding AI Position Statement

We appreciate the thoughtful engagement with our AI position statement and welcome the opportunity to clarify its purpose and scope.

On the Nature of Position Statements

This document was intentionally designed as a strategic framework, not an operational report. Position statements articulate vision, principles, and direction—they establish the “why” and “how” of our approach before diving into the “what.” Detailed project reporting would be premature at this stage and risks creating false expectations about work that is still exploratory and evolving.

On Transparency and Timing

We acknowledge the desire for concrete examples. However, responsible innovation requires careful evaluation before public disclosure. Many of our AI pilots are:

• Still in active testing phases, where outcomes remain uncertain
• Subject to privacy and procurement considerations that limit what we can share publicly
• Being developed in partnership with vendors and institutions under confidentiality agreements
• Dependent on federal approval processes that govern public communication about emerging technologies

Premature disclosure of specific tools, vendors, or methodologies could compromise competitive procurement, create vendor lock-in, or raise unrealistic public expectations.

On Alignment with Government Priorities

The references to federal policies are not “box-ticking”—they represent mandatory compliance frameworks for all federal institutions. The Directive on Automated Decision-Making, for instance, requires algorithmic impact assessments before deployment. Our alignment with these frameworks demonstrates due diligence, not bureaucratic theatre.

On the Scope of This Document

As explicitly stated in the introduction, this position statement does not attempt to address all impacts of AI. Issues including copyright, legal deposit, and definitional questions around creation are being worked through separately with government and GLAM sector colleagues. A comprehensive document covering every dimension of AI would be unwieldy and quickly outdated.

On Substance Over Spectacle

We respectfully disagree that concrete examples are the only measure of serious commitment. The foundational work of:

• Auditing legacy metadata for quality and bias
• Establishing ethical review protocols
• Building staff capacity through training
• Developing partnerships with peer institutions

…is inherently less visible than launching a flashy AI tool, but it is no less essential. Rushing to deploy AI without this groundwork would be the truly irresponsible path.

Looking Forward

We commit to more detailed public reporting as projects mature and move from pilot to implementation phases. Future communications will include case studies, metrics, and lessons learned. However, we will not sacrifice careful planning for the appearance of momentum.

Our position statement is meant to signal readiness and commitment, not premature victory. We invite continued dialogue as our work progresses.

Translation: “We’re a government institution. We write frameworks, not features. Check back in 3-5 years for the progress report that will say we’re still exploring opportunities.”

The above translation paragraph was also composed by AI.

Researchers with Ontario roots have reason to celebrate: The Ontario Name Index (TONI) is now available on Ancestry, significantly expanding access to this valuable resource.

For years, TONI has been available only through the Ontario Genealogical Society website. While genealogists familiar with OGS knew to search there, the collection remained relatively unknown to the broader community of researchers who might benefit from it.

Two Versions, Different Scopes

The Ontario Name Index is a comprehensive database spanning records from 1812 to 2023, created by OGS volunteers and launched in 2011. Now it exists in two locations with different record counts.

Ancestry’s collection contains 7,656,896 records—all those that OGS volunteers have transcribed from original sources. The version on the OGS website at https://ogs.on.ca/toni/ is substantially larger, with 14,668,724 indexed records.

Why the difference? According to Mike More, who leads TONI, the OGS website includes records that were incorporated with permission from other sites. While OGS can host these records, they don’t have the rights to share them on platforms like Ancestry.

What You’ll Find

The index draws from diverse sources including birth, marriage, and death records, newspapers, censuses, government documents, and family histories. Entries typically include the individual’s name, county and township, record type, year, and repository location.

While the collection doesn’t contain images of original records, it serves as a crucial finding aid, pointing researchers toward the repositories where original documents can be accessed.

A Practical Approach

For researchers, searching this might mean a two-step strategy. Start with a familiar Ancestry search. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, check the OGS website directly, as additional records may fill in the gaps.

A recent post about the LAC Annual Departmental Results Report for 2024-2025 included information that

A new partnership with Internet Archive Canada (IAC), announced in June 2024, contributed another 2.8 million images by March 2025. The collaboration focuses on copyright-free publications from the 1300s through the 1920s, making rare historical materials freely available online. The initiative has already processed over 14,000 publications.

Updated information from LAC is that as of October 2025, 20,254 publications have been digitized, generating 4,320,900 images.

Information on the digitized catalogue will be shared once the material becomes publicly available through the IAC website. There’s no target date.

Dick Eastman has a post about a new online resource that opens Ireland’s transport heritage to the public with a genealogical database of almost 7,000 names.

TheGenealogist has added 1,090,293 records to its Great War Casualty List collection, completing the War Office lists and taking the total to over 4.5 million records!

This final addition covers the period from 8 April 1918 to 4 March 1919, officially concluding TheGenealogist’s coverage of the original War Office Weekly Casualty Lists.

This comprehensive release contains names derived from the official weekly lists published at the time, along with later corrections where available. The records are fully searchable and include key details for those who served.

• 🔍 Searchable Detail: Search by Name, Rank, Regiment/Unit, and (where recorded) Service Number.
• 🩺 Casualty Type: The lists record the specific nature of the casualty, such as Killed, Wounded, Missing, Prisoner of War, and Died of Wounds.

This database contains 115,573 records from houses of correction across the County of Suffolk, England,  primarily from receiving books at Ipswich Gaol, with additional material from Beccles, Bury, and Woodbridge. If you had Suffolk ancestry in the period, I do, and given the population of 327,240 in 1851, there’s a fair chance of finding a miscreant.

I found a namesake of my two-times-great-grandmother, convicted of prostitution. If it had been mine, I’d know, from the surprisingly detailed biographical snapshot, details beyond the basics of name, age, and offence, such as:

• Physical description (height, hair colour, eye colour)
• Birthplace and residence
• Occupation and literacy level
• Religion and marital status
• Father’s name, birthplace, and occupation
• Complete timeline from warrant to trial, sentencing, and release

The receiving books sometimes recorded even more granular details, including which school an inmate attended, the amount and type of clothing they possessed upon admission, and whether they had prior convictions. Lists of confined inmates might note the work performed behind bars and comments on behaviour.

I asked Google Gemini to suggest five undreamed-of, but realistic, advancements in family history over the next 20 years.

Before dismissing these, pause and consider whether you’d have predicted the current state of the art in 2005.

Here’s the response:

1. AI-Driven, Global Record Synthesis

What it is: Artificial intelligence will achieve a near-perfect ability to not only transcribe handwritten, fragile, and foreign-language records, but also to synthesize them into a unified, verified life story.

• AI will automatically cross-reference information (names, dates, locations, and relationships) across billions of records worldwide—census, parish, military, land, and migration documents—regardless of data quality or linguistic differences.
• The system will suggest and validate family connections with high statistical certainty, effectively building and error-checking vast portions of your family tree automatically, replacing hours of manual record hunting.

2. Whole-Genome Genealogy 🔬

What it is: Current consumer DNA tests analyze a tiny fraction of your genome. In the next 20 years, whole-genome sequencing will become the norm and affordable, unlocking unprecedented genetic genealogical detail.

• This will allow for the identification of shared segments even with extremely distant cousins (10th+), vastly increasing the size of genetic match pools and breaking down long-standing “brick walls” in earlier centuries.
• It will also lead to high-resolution mapping of ancestral migration routes, tracking lineages not just to a country or region, but to specific historical villages or tribal groups thousands of years ago.

3. Immersive Heritage Experiences (VR/AR) 🗺️

What it is: Virtual and augmented reality will transform how you interact with your family history, moving beyond flat screens to three-dimensional, sensory experiences.

• Virtual Reality (VR) will allow you to “walk” through a digital reconstruction of your ancestor’s home, neighborhood, or village, built using historical maps, photos, and records.
• Augmented Reality (AR), accessible via a phone or smart glasses, could overlay information onto real-world locations—standing in your great-grandparents’ hometown, you’d see historical photos or record snippets tied to the buildings around you.

4. “Digital Twins” of Ancestral Data 💾

What it is: Genealogy platforms will move beyond simply storing documents and start creating dynamic, interactive digital avatars or “twins” of your ancestors based on all available data.

• This twin could be an AI-generated biography that automatically updates as new records are found, complete with a timeline and historical context (e.g., placing their life events against major local or world events).
• Future tools may even use voice synthesis and deep-learning models to simulate your ancestor’s voice based on historical recordings from their time/region, allowing for an interactive, conversational experience with your past.

5. Ethical Frameworks for Shared Genomic Data 🤝

What it is: As DNA testing reveals increasingly sensitive information (health risks, unexpected parentage), a new, widely adopted ethical and legal framework will be established for genetic and historical data sharing.

• This system will use blockchain or similar secure, decentralized technology to give individuals granular control over who sees which specific parts of their DNA data and for what purpose (genealogy, health research, law enforcement).
• This shift will be necessary to balance the powerful capabilities of whole-genome analysis with the fundamental right to genetic privacy and consent, ensuring the continued growth and trust in the field.