The Eastern Regional Library Show

Library staff member Lesley Conway runs a radio show each Wednesday 12:05pm-12:45pm on Eastern FM 99.1 called The Eastern Regional Library Show. Tune in next Wednesday for a great show.

On this week's show

Today saw the return of our Family Historian Kathy Smalley to the show. As she pointed out, genealogy refers to tracing a family tree, but family historians usually want to broaden the picture with information about the period that relatives lived in, maybe information about the suburbs, towns, or even the houses that ancestors live in. And now it's possible to find out if members of your family held shares in a mining company, by checking the CDROM Mining shareholders index, 1857-1886 for Victoria, which is available at Ringwood Library. (There are many other fascinating CDROMs).

Kathy also brought us up to date with some new Census information for Scotland which is available through the Ancestry.com database which is available on all public PCs in our library branches. Both the 1881 and 1901 Census results have been added to a list of Scottish Census which cover the period 1841 to 1901.

One very useful hint Kathy passed on today was that there is information about problems associated with particular census data, at the end of the census. She suggest scrolling to the end of the information of any given census and checking this out, as in every case there is listed some information which has not been included because records have been lost or damaged. In the case of the 1841 census, a significant decision to round out the ages of people to the nearest figure divisible by five, means that if you are searching by age, you need to set your parameters to 5 years either side of the age you have for your ancestor. There are also cases where information was recorded in pencil, and not legible, and where marks on the census for male/female have gone into another column, and your ancestor John Smith may be recorded as female. Kathy suggests not putting in male/female as part of your search terms.

If you are interested in an informal family history information sharing session, the Genie Exchanges which happen every two months at Ringwood, Lilydale and Belgrave libraries, and monthly at Knox library are a good way to keep up to date with what is available, and these sort of useful tips. There is no need to book for these exchanges, and you will have access to computer resources, microfiche, print resources, and staff who are funds of invaluable information. Don't forget too that you can subscribe to the e-newsletter through the ERL website - click on the Family History link.

Some other invaluable resources for researching family history are the following web databases, friendsunited.com.au and schoolsunited.com, where it is possible to find information put on about families and individuals, family trees and school records, and to place requests for information. Access is free up to a point, there are fees for extended access.

Music today was Willie Nelson from the CD The Highwaymen perform on their own.

Cheers, Maryanne