If you are interested in learning more about the history and people of New France, Acadia and Québec, a collection of more than 300 digitized books on these subjects might be of interest to you. There are two problems with this collection: all the books are in French, and it is not easy to navigate the site. Nevertheless, it is worth persisting, especially if you are a genealogist or have a background in history or archives.

This free virtual library is continually growing. The books, available as PDFs, can be found at www.patrimoinequebec.ca/bibliotheque/propos.php

The online collection focuses on genealogy. It includes family biographies, dictionaries in alphabetical order by various authors addressing families of Nouvelle-France and Québec, genealogical dictionaries, historical men and women from the 16^th century onward of Nouvelle-France and Québec, family lineages, and descriptions of online collections, historical villages, towns and cities of Quebec.

A collection on the site that is of special interest to genealogists is called Registre Cadastrale (cadastral registry). These volumes list the seigneuries and their owners, the rangs (roads) in each seigneurie, the names of the censitaires (tenants), the amount of land each tenant held and the annual rent.

Two unique online dossiers address the content of the various fonds (collections) at BAnQ (Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec) and their 12 repositories, namely: Rapport de l’Archiviste du Québec and Collectif des Archives de Québec.

To explore the collection and search the Patrimoine Québec (heritage Quebec) website, go to http://www.patrimoinequebec.ca/

You can use free online translation tools such as Google Translate, or the DeepL Translator (https://www.deepl.com/en/translator) to translate the texts. The site’s home page is available in English translation at http://www.patrimoinequebec.ca/library/.