Moonee Valley Family & Local History Blog

The Victorian birth, death and marriage indexes online have been extended. This means that there are now an extra 8 years of marriage entries (up to 1950) available, as well as one more year of birth details (1853 to 1917).

You may or may not realise that we have a whole lot of online content that is freely available for our library members. The newest addition to this range lets you watch streaming videos, it's a product called Kanopy. There's all kinds of films and documentaries on Kanopy, from around the World. There is even local content. Check out Community Cop a doco from 2009 which follows a policeman at the Flemington High Rise Estate. Or if high fashion is more your thing, try Harry Halim & Betty Jackson & J'Aton to find out about the J'Aton label which started with a shop in Ascot Vale and now sell their gowns to celebrity clients worldwide. Our very own Avondale Heights Library even features, in an episode of the Sacred Spaces architecture series from 2013. Just look for the doco called Avondale Heights Library.

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...

At Moonee Valley Library branches you can now access British Newspaper Archive , an online resource which allows you to view millions of pages of British historical newspapers published since 1800. As well as searching news articles and advertisements, you can also search family notices, letters and obituaries– which makes this an extremely useful resource for researching British ancestors. British Newspaper Archive is not available to access from home, but it is so easy to use and fascinating to view that it is well worth paying us a visit to try it out.