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Research in Other Countries => Australia => Australia Resources & Offers => Topic started by: q98 on Friday 08 August 08 11:53 BST (UK)
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Hopefully, this service will prove useful to fellow researchers.
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On 25 July 2008, in collaboration with the State and Territory libraries, the National Library of Australia launched the Australian Newspapers Beta service which makes available out-of-copyright digitised Australian newspapers. This exciting new online service enables the full-text searching of newspapers published in each state and territory from the 1800s to the mid-1950s. The first Australian newspaper, the Sydney Gazette published in Sydney in 1803, is included in the service.
The Australian Newspapers Beta service already contains over 90,000 newspaper pages from 1803 onwards, with more pages being added daily, see http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au (http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au) .
The National Library of Australia welcomes your feedback on the service. Details on the way in which feedback can be provided are on the 'about' page of the service. The Library will continue to develop the Beta service and fix any bugs and major issues that arise over the next few months.
The Beta service, will be further developed in line with user feedback into version 1 of the Australian Newspapers service and be officially launched in 2009. The progress and extent of newspaper titles being digitised is outlined on the ANDP website - see http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp.
The Australian Newspaper Digitisation Team
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Q98
Fremantle
Western Australia
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Thank you very much Q98 - hours of fun to be had! ;D
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I agree Ruskie, looks an extremely interesting site.
BTW, just posted my latest thoughts re my McCreadie's.
Q98
Fremantle
Western Australia
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Thanks for the link, I have managed to find a relative on there after only a few minutes of searching.
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Fantastic - found one of mine already
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Great link, although years I am interested in are not on yet. I shall watch with anticipation. ;D
kerry
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My goodness, what a terrific site this is going to be!! ;D Thanks very much, Q98, for letting us know about it! ;D
(It makes me wonder, sadly and bitterly - if Gale Group can digitise lots of British newspapers for a cost - if one can get into it at all, and if the National Library of Australia can do all this for free - why can't the GRO in England get a handle on digitising its vital records?? ??? ??? :( >:( )
MarieC
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Absolutely Marie, I agree wholeheartedly.
Perhaps the Nat Library of Australia just aren't so greedy ::) :(
Kerry
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I can't claim credit for locating the website - I don't recall exactly where I located it but thought it deserved more circulation than it appeared to be getting.
Q98
Fremantle
WA
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There does seem to be a different attitude in Oz.
The military records where they have been scanned are online.
In the case of the newspapers in UK, the British Library have partnered up with Gale n similar way to the National Archives allows companies to scan records e.g. findmypast and the shipping records.
Bob
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The Australian attitude to its military records I always find quite humbling in comparison to the UKs. Like so many others my grandfather's WW1 record has been carefully photographed and is free to view - all 60 pages of it. Here it's £3.50 just to find out what you can have guessed, that someone got their bog standard 2 war medals ...
I do feel that Australia honour their soldiers more than us.
Carole
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The availability of our soldiers records is probably due to Australia's First World War official war correspondent C W Bean. The Australian War Memorial was his idea and he was, I believe, its first Director.
Q98
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Well, I didn't know that either, Q98! You're always learning on here!
WWII records haven't been digitised on the site yet - some of these men are still alive. But you can pay to have your own ancestor's records digitised and put on there. Not totally cheap, but a good thing to do - keep meaning to do it for my dad.
MarieC
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Well, I didn't know that either, Q98! You're always learning on here!
WWII records haven't been digitised on the site yet - some of these men are still alive. But you can pay to have your own ancestor's records digitised and put on there. Not totally cheap, but a good thing to do - keep meaning to do it for my dad.
MarieC
This isn't quite true - I've looked at my mother's boyfriend's WW2 RAAF record. Perhaps his is available because he died in 1970?
Carole
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Oh yes, it's right, Carole, because I've looked into it. Your mother's boyfriend's record and any others that are there, are there because someone has paid for them to be digitised and put there. Unfortunately they don't check all the veterans to see who has died and put their records up - it would be a massive task - if they did, my Dad's records would be there by now and I wouldn't have to be paying to put them there!!!!
MarieC
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Two excellent books to read are:
Bean's Gallipoli - The Diaries of Australia's Official War Correspondent, Allen and Unwin, ISBN 978-1-74175-088-1
and
Goodbye Cobber, God Bless You, Pan Macmillan Australia, ISBN
1-4050-3624-9
Goodbye Cobber etc. was immortalized in the Peter Weir movie "Gallipoli". At a location named "The Nek", six hundred Australian Lighthorse men charged, in four waves, across a piece of ground no larger than three tennis courts, armed ONLY with bayonets. The order was "rifles unloaded and uncharged" - no magazine and no round in the breach! "The Nek" was reinforced with artrillery, machine-guns and thousands of Turks. Each wave of Lighthouse men rose and charged despite seeing what happened to the previous wave. There being so many dead and wounded, running was impossible.
Q98
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Oh yes, it's right, Carole, because I've looked into it. Your mother's boyfriend's record and any others that are there, are there because someone has paid for them to be digitised and put there. Unfortunately they don't check all the veterans to see who has died and put their records up - it would be a massive task - if they did, my Dad's records would be there by now and I wouldn't have to be paying to put them there!!!!
MarieC
Well that's very interesting - I didn't know that and I'm now very curious as to who paid to have it digitalised as he never married and didn't have that much of a family.
I know it took time (not surprisingly) for the WW1 records to be done, and you could request a few a year to be digitalised withou any cost, as my cousin requested his grandfathers records.
I do know my mother's record won't be there as although she was a WRAAF because she joined up in England her records are not kept in Australia.
Carole
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Take a look at what http://www.nambour-chronicle.com is doing. It's an archive of the Nambour Chronicle & North Coast Advertiser first published in 1903.