Yesterday (13 November 2013) I attended the Victorian Archives Centre Stakeholder meeting on behalf of the Australasian Association of Genealogists and Record Agents (AAGRA).
An agreement has been signed with FamilySearch to digitise wills and probate records from 1926 – 1937 extending the digitisation of those records which is currently up to 1925.
An agreement with another company is close to being finalised to digitise all the current microform holdings that have been produced by the Public Record Office. And further discussions with others are being held around additional digitisation projects. Accessibility of frequently used items of the collection looks to be taking a great leap forward!
There was a presentation on online transformation and redevelopment of the website of the Public Record Office (PROV). Building and delivery of the website will occur up until 2015. The current disparate components of the website:
- Access the collection
- PROV online indexes
- PROV wiki
will be integrated. Website standards, including accessibilty standards, will be incorporated.
A beta site may be available this time next year. It will run in parallel with the existing website while any issues are sorted out.
There was some discussion about availability of the collection via Trove. At the moment metadata is shared with researchdata.ands.org.au . Have a look at http://researchdata.ands.org.au/search/#!/class=collection/p=1/group=Public%20Record%20Office%20Victoria/ to get new insights into the PROV’s collection.
The discussion also covered
- regional archives centres including the new reading room for the Bendigo Archives Centre
- the Local History Grants program and the Victorian Community History Awards
- the new exhibition over summer will be Streets of Melbourne opening on 25 November
- following on from the success of the first open day, another is being panned for March 2014
At the round table at the end of the meeting updates from other stakeholders included
- news of digitisation projects of ratebooks of the City of Melbourne
- the new Docklands library will open in March and will include exhibition space devoted to the heritage of the area
- the History Teachers’ Association of Victoria have produced a video series on why study history with interviews with a number of people who have studied History and now work in a range of related professions.
- the update from the Victorian Association of Family History Organisations (VAFHO) mentioned the success of the Ballarat conference earlier this year and also the Family History Feast held as a joint venture between the State Library, PROV and the National Archives. Also that National Family History Week was now National Family History Month and would be held in August next year.
- the Genealogical Society of Victoria (GSV) mentioned several large projects including imaging Fawkner Cemetery records and indexing the Richmond rate books.
- the Australian Women’s Archives Project mentioned an online encyclopaedia about Women in Leadership to be launched early next year
On 1 February moved this post across from my other blogging site (A Family Historian from Ballarat) as I have decided to have only one blog.
