Thirty participants, including non-U3A members, attended this workshop on October 9th organised by Toni McCormack with funding from the Federal government’s “Be Connected” program.
Cheryl Baulch opened the session outlining potential online resources for the amateur historian. Cheryl is a local historian and author of the recently-released Together They Served, which relates the stories of 700 shire residents who enlisted in World War I, a project that took five years of research, and making her the perfect exponent for resource-finding.
This was followed by Anglesea historian Susan Clarke who outlined the possible information available on Births, Deaths & Marriages registers. John Stewart, U3A SurfCoast member, guided participants through ways to access family details through Trove – Australian and online resources site for books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and more.
After a delicious lunch, Victoria Mathews, manager of the Torquay branch of the Geelong Regional Library Corporation, opened up to the group the wide range of free library resources for anyone interested in family research.
This workshop has generated a lot of interest and U3A Surf Coast is keen to run something similar again in the future if there is sufficient interest and sees it as fulfilling one of our aims, namely collaborating with other local groups and being a valuable resource for the whole community.
