As a family historian I love digitisation of family history records. How this technology has changed the field of genealogy and brought so much information to the public.
The National Archives of Australia and the Public Records Office are continually undertaking digitising of records for the public. The National Archives commenced a national digitisation service in February 2007. The service provides online access to the Archive's collection across Australia, featuring both on-demand (whereby the user pays for the record to be digitised) and proactive digitising (whereby the NAA will actively digitise all records in a series eg. naturalization records).
'So what?'you say. By being able to access these digitised records online, so far free of charge as the documents had already been digitised, I have been able to find out a wealth of information about my great-grandfather. Information I have not been able to locate elsewhere. But the beauty of the technology is that I can view the original records of his naturalization papers and discover from his internment records of WW1 that he died in internment. And all from the comfort of my chair in my own home! I find this technology great and it is the direction that family history is taking. Some say this is a shame as this is isolating people. They say half the fun of genealogy is visiting repositories and obtaining the documents.
But for me, I don't have the time to visit places such as the National Archives in Canberra or even the Public Record Office of Victoria in North Melbourne. To have the technology such as digitising is fantastic. At a recent Family History Forum, at the State Library of Victoria, I listened to a lecture by the Newspaper Librarian. He said digitising technology has meant that users are demanding that more and more newspapers are digitised and made accessible online. The State Library has listened to its users and is now undertaking a massive newspaper digitisation project.
So digitisation is a form of technology that has helped me greatly!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Your search for information about your great grandfathers internment is interesting. I am also an avid family researcher and have been researching the Internment Camps in Australia during WWI in particular Bourke. Finding more ways to find information during this course is great!
Post a Comment