Moonee Valley Family & Local History Blog

Anzac Day in 2020 will be very different. Marches and other gatherings may  have been cancelled but you can still honour those who served in other ways by doing a little research and sharing the information. The starting  point is the  Australian War Memorial (AWM) which has a number of records available online including the poignant Red Cross Wounded and Missing Files. AWM also provides useful links to other sites such as the National Archives of Australia (NAA)  and the Commonwealth War Graves .  Both NAA and AWM have research guides to assist you. Memoriams are another poignant reminder of the cost of war and they can be found by searching through Trove , particularly in local newspapers. Most newspapers from 1914 to 1918 have been digitised and are available to view in full. They are a valuable reminder of that period in our history. Record the information you gather so that you can share it with others. There are many digital platforms avail...

Have you heard about SODA? It stands for Stream of Digital Archives and was created by the National Archives of Australia to let people know about new images that are upload to their collection. The National Archives uploads between 50-1000 digital copies a day and upwards of 15,000 a month. All images are open and available to the public. What's different about SODA is that not only can you access and view these items, but you can share them through social media, export it as a PDF or email it a friend or family member.  Some of the things you can find on SODA include war graves records cards, cabinet minutes, enlistment photographs, reparation records and so much more. So have a look at SODA today. Visit: http://soda.naa.gov.au/

So Christmas and New Years are finished and you're looking for something to fill in the rest of the Summer break. Well why not discover more about the history of Melbourne by visiting the Old Treasury Building on Spring Street. With free entry and a number of great exhibitions, including the history of Soldier Settlers in Victoria during the Inter-War years this is a great day out for any history buff. For more information and to see what else they have running, click  here . If you can't make it out but are still interested in learning some interesting facts, don't worry! The National Archives of Australia have released the Cabinet documents for the 1990-1991 year, so to hear what you can now search as well as about previous years, click  here . Finally for those Family History buffs who are using this downtime to work on their family trees, if you've hit a roadblock on some areas have a look at what the National Archives of Australia have to help you find what y...

The National Archives of Australia will be hosting an open day at the Public Records Office on Friday 25th February, 9.30am-4pm, the event is free. This is your chance to take part in activities, demonstrations and workshops. For more information and a detailed listing of the Melbourne program visit NNA website.

As part of a program of building works being conducted by Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) to improve the Victorian Archives Centre in North Melbourne, there will be some disruption to our services from 1st June, 2009. As a result of the building works the Victorian Archives Centre will not be open on Saturdays or Mondays from 1st June, 2009 to February, 2010. This means that the Victorian Archives Centre Reading Room will be closed to the public on Saturdays and Mondays between these dates. This necessary work will ensure that the archival collections of both PROV and the National Archives of Australia stored in the Victorian Archives Centre continue to be preserved in state-of-the-art facilities.