Trove

[tenterfieldjulie]

Trove is the Database of the National Library of Australia and is free to use. It has great information, but there are a few things to be aware of in using it. It is much more than newspapers, but as I have been using them frequently lately, I thought I would give a overview of what I have found.

The digitizing has been done electronically and as newsprint, especially old newsprint, bleeds often, the transcriptions can be gobbledegook, unless another user has got there first and transcribed. The Library has transcriptions by users. You can either do this by using a captcha, to prove you are real, or you can register, which is very easy and you can use a made up name.

So first you read the newspaper article and then you type the correct words, save and then highlight, copy and paste to your Doc. You will find that everything that comes after the transcription you want has also copied, so you will need to delete that. I then use the back arrows until I find the listing of the newspaper that I have just transcribed the article from and I copy and paste it at the beginning of the article.

So how do you find the article you want? .. In an ideal system you would put in a surname+place name eg Egan+Tenterfield into the search box and find them, but often that doesn’t work. So put in a place name+year date Tenterfield+1868 and it will ask you if you want the year (this will be highlighted in red below) click yes . It is tedious, but I found lots of articles for Egan which didn’t register in the search engine, but when I scanned through the articles on the place, I found information I was looking for. You need to be patient, but after a while you recognise the descriptions which give personal information – you will then scroll over such items as weather, general advertisements, political articles etc.

You can also save the newspaper article from the original as a PDF.

I would be interested in other people’s experiences of using Trove and any advice they have.

Thanks. Julie

[Janet]

Trove is well named, Julie. I've found it a treasure trove and have used much the same methods as you so I don't think I have anything to add there, but I'm always very satisfied when I tidy something up and leave it in good shape for the next reader.

[Kit]

I'm not sure why you need a DOC to transcribe. You can do it line by line.

When in a rush I only transcribe names or dates or something identifying.

I tend to have a wide search ie name only and then start to narrow it down by year or paper. In the older days smaller papers tended to copy the larger or city papers so sometimes you might pick up an article from a more obscure paper as the OCR worked better for some reason.

[tenterfieldjulie]

I've found Kit that our newspapers didn't survive, but fortunately other newspapers that picked up articles from them did.

Sorry I didn't write what I meant clearly .. Hope I do now .. I don't transcribe in a Doc, but after I have transcribed, I copy and paste it into a Word Doc. Otherwise you end up printing off pages, sometimes with only a few lines. I used to write all sorts of notes in a hurry and then afterwards couldn't read my notes, or remember the date of the newspaper!!

Now with hard copy at our Local Library, they suggest you bring your camera and take photos, as they won't let you photocopy from the original bound newspapers. You just need to make sure that the battery on the camera is charged lol

[Janet]

Good point, Julie. Is that the voice of bitter disappointment speaking? It's happened to me too, but when I discovered how cheap the replacement camera batteries are I bought myself two more of them so that now I always have a spare. I only wondered why I hadn't done it long ago. You don't have to buy the one that your camera manufacturer sells. There are plenty of good third-party products.

[Kit]

Makes sense Julie.

I always copy and paste the name of the paper and the date from Trove into the notes section of my program. That way I know who, what and where.

[marquette]

I love Trove, with family here since the early 1800s. In the book section, i have found books written by family members; as well as photos of them and by them, besides the wealth of information in the newspapers.

I have found information in the most surprising places, especially as the larger papers often reported stories from more local papers. It is helpful to remember that the Maitland Mercury and Hunter River Advertiser was one of the largest papers in the mid-late 19th century. It reported all sorts of non-local stuff.

I love the way that many inquests and inquiries were reported verbatim ! I found out so much about the Millburn Creek Copper Mine Royal Commission without having to resort to the Commission papers. Court cases - divorces, bankrupts, bigamy, inquests, crimes, and the most detailed obituaries have all added to information I have on my ancestors.

I have also found that in that people were often not fully named, "a man called Smith" or "a man from Bourke" was all that was reported and that you should be flexible with spelling of names and places. Sometimes by searching the place name or other details, if you limit by newspaper and date you can find a specific article if you think it should be there.

People also travelled a long way, further than you would think (or that I thought). An inquest for a man who drowned in 1885 stated that although he drowned in Darling Harbour in Sydney he lived in Bowral, 115km south of Sydney (he came on a matter of business) and the man who identified him was from Menangle (70km south west and 56km from Bowral). It does not say that the man from Menangle was his brother-in-law, but that's how I knew the drowned man was the right one !

Sometimes I copy and paste the whole corrected transcription into the notes section of my database, with name of the paper and date at at the top.

Also, if I come across a lot of garbled transcriptions from a page of blurred or hard to read family notices, as well as my own interest, I will correct all the surnames in the section.


Diane

[Janet]

Also, if I come across a lot of garbled transcriptions from a page of blurred or hard to read family notices, as well as my own interest, I will correct all the surnames in the section.


What a good thought, Diane, and I intend to do the same from here out. Thanks.