Moonee Valley Family & Local History Blog

Group of men reading newspaper broadsheets Drawing by S. T. Gill (1818-1880) courtesy of State Library Victoria Have you noticed that Trove is looking a little different these days? Trove is a one stop shop for all your Australian research needs, and is a collaboration between the National Library of Australia and hundreds of Partner organisations around Australia. From late June 2020, Trove has been updated with a fresh new interface and a bunch of new features to help you get the most out of your research. You can read the story behind the new design and features here , before getting stuck into finding your way around the new layout. Explore the extensive collection of digitized Australian content- newspapers, government gazettes, photographs, maps, journals and even sheet music! Can’t find something on the new look Trove that you could on the old version? There some handy hints for making the most of the new layout here , along a great how-to video for a broad introduction...

For today's Things to do Thursday, take a step back in time from the comfort of your own home with the Australian Women's Weekly. Centenary of Municipal Government in Essendon 1961 Historic issues of the much loved Weekly are online, thanks to Trove! The National Library of Australia has digitised issues of the Australian Women's Weekly from 1933 to 1982, in their entirety and in glorious colour. Explore some light reading from the week of your birth, or around the time of a significant historic event. There are articles, recipes, knitting patterns, crosswords, quizzes and beauty tips from throughout the decades- plenty of activities to try and new skills to learn to keep you entertained at home. https://trove.nla.gov.au/aww

Image sourced from National Library of Australia Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/National.Library.of.Australia As part of National Family History Month the National Library of Australia and Trove are working together to answer your family questions. Today from 4:00pm AEST jump on their Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/National.Library.of.Australia  and ask them anything that might help you with your family history. If you need any more help with discovering your Family History come into any Moonee Valley library branch and ask one of our friendly staff for advice.

Election fever has hit again, and the National Library is after election material from our area. What do they want? -Printed federal election campaign material: leaflets, how-to-vote cards, letters to constituents, stickers, badges or posters. Basically anything printed to promote a party or candidate, or to lobby on election issues like education funding, immigration, marriage equality, taxation, Pistol and Boo.... No item - or issue - is too small! -Original published material, rather than photocopies, scans or digital files. - Hot tips and recommendations for election-related websites might digitally archive: pass these on via the PANDORA nomination form . - Some election-related satire and a bit of silly stuff (like the 2013 Boney Abbott and Chewlia Gillard dog toys), as well as commercial tie-in product advertising like the Muffin Break “Bean Poll” counter displays  or  Nick Xenophon’s empty Pyne pizza box . Why do they want it, and what do th...

Recently it was announced that the Federal Government's efficiency dividend would be making cuts of $20 million from cultural institutions. One of the implications of these cutbacks has been to the National Library of Australia's Trove database.  Trove allows everyone to search collections from cultural institutions across the country. They are also the largest organisation digitising collections for institutions, as well as providing grants for libraries, museums and historical societies to do the same. Trove has been seen as a world leading database which other national institutions are now trying to copy. Trove has digitised hundreds of newspapers, maps, images as well as books and articles. It is now the first port of call for most people looking to research local or family history. Around 70,000 people use Trove everyday. However with these cuts taking place 22 jobs at the National Library will be lost, with most of these coming from the digitisation department ...

Trove is back online. After a week of tinkering Trove 7 is now live and able to be used again. Some of the updates that have been made include the publishing of the NSW Government Gazettes from 1832-2001. One of the big changes has been to newspaper searching. Gone is the map of where you would like to click, replaced with a narrowing search field that pops across the front of the screen. While this might take some getting used to, it allows for articles to be found faster than before. To discover what's new click here.  

Trove is changing! The National Library of Australia online resources database is getting a facelift and will get some improvements. To do this Trove will be shut down from 5pm AEDT on Monday 22 February until Thursday 25 February. This means that Trove will not be working for a few days while the update takes place. Some of the new features that will be coming include a simplified interface to make finding items easier, customisable viewer displays to help you see items the way you want to see them and a new browse feature to netter display results. If you are looking for help with finding resources during this time, ask the staff at any Moonee Valley Library branch to see if they have something that might help with your historical research, or you can go directly to the sites that Trove gathers it's information from. For more information about the update to Trove visit here. Trove logo sourced from National Library of Australia website: http://www.nla.gov.au/media/trove...

 Since its inception a couple of years ago The National Library of Australia’s Trove website has been a wonderful resource for anyone interested in history or genealogy. Trove gives you access to Australian and online resources including books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and more. Information is continually being added so if you will always find something new to look at. A wonderful example is The Australian Women’s Weekly, which has been digitised from 1933 to 1982. This is a great social history resource and is full of interesting and surprising articles along with  fashion, craft and cooking guides.

This is a new online search catalogue from the National Library of Australia may assist with searches for local history, biographies of local identities, MMBW maps, family diaries and letters . A search for Moonee Ponds and Melbourne into TROVE as Keywords and turned up 22 results for Books, Journals, Magazines etc, 1,021 results for Pictures and Photos, 63,969 results for Australian Newspapers (1803-1954), 3 results for Music, Sound, Video, 42 results for Maps, 588 sites for Archived Websites (1996-now) and 17 results in About People and Organisations.

This much anticipated Australian Newspapers BETA search is now available at http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au/ and from the Search tab on the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program (ANDP) website http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp. This service is free to the public and currently contains 73,000 out of copyright newspaper pages (approx 730,000 individual articles) from 1803 onwards. The National Library of Australia welcomes feedback and suggestions from users of the service to enable further development.