Today, I got lost in the Library and Archives website, searching through various databases.

The primary reason I consulted the website was to use the Census Search, which provides access to records in census years from 1825 to 1931 in a single database. In one fell swoop, you can search through all census years (the when) and all census locations (the where), providing a name, age and/or year of birth of the person you're seeking (the who). You can even specify a range if you're not sure whether the person you're looking for was born in 1853 or 1854, for example. You can download an image of the applicable page of the relevant census for research and private purposes. You can get a link to the exact record to return to in the future. You can also create a My Research account, and add records to it.

I also poked around the Collections Search, which enables you to search many of the collections available to the public at Library and Archives Canada from a single starting point. For example, a search of "Hollington" brings up 86 results; when filtered by the Genealogy tab, 3 results are returned, all from the First World War Personnel Records. This includes the Attestation Paper for Leonard Hollington, a great-great-uncle who died in Belgium in 1917.

I found references to ancestors in the Canadian Directories Collection, which provides addresses for people and businesses in a collection of directories for Ottawa from 1861 to 1901.

The Library and Archives Canada page Search the collections identifies 62 databases and tools that can be searched individually. Examples are Citizenship registration records, Montreal Circuit Court, 1851 to 1945, Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841 and Second World War Service Files – War Dead, 1939 to 1947.

Increasingly, resources of value to genealogical research are available online, making ancestry projects easier than ever to embark on. I'll return to the Library and Archives website to gather more records and to follow its guidance for Genealogy and family history.