Image source: http://www.trove.nla.gov.au
Absolutely fabulous best friend. Writers often do very strange things in the name of research. Take for instance me. In the early days of writing my manuscript Paris Next Week, I decided on the suburbs my main characters would live in. Sarah Montague would live in Elizabeth Bay and her best friend Louie Gilbraith would live in Darling Point, a surburb east of the centre of Sydney and just east of Elizabeth Bay. See my earlier post Playing Musical Chairs With Sydney Suburbs on how I came to that decision. Now all I needed was a suitable house for both.
Enter my best friend. It wasn’t too hard finding a suitable mansion on google for Louie but Sarah’s house proved elusive. I don’t know how many searches I did on google for Elizabeth Bay houses/Elizabeth Bay mansions/Old houses in Elizabeth Bay etc. I wasted hours trolling through 21st century real estate and countless images of the iconic Elizabeth Bay House. Nothing suitable. Around this time I had started using Trove and bingo! 103 search results, predominantly the first half of the last century. I had my house for Sarah along with a lot of internet sites such as the Historic Houses Trust, the State Library and the Government Printing Office. Invaluable.
Need to find what wealthy Australians got up to in the 1920s? Try Tea Table Gossip which I only discovered through the newspapers scanned at Trove. “Mrs W A Sargent of Greycliffe, Darlinghurst has returned from her trip to Victoria.” “Miss Gertrude Toohey will sail for South Africa next week. Early in March her marriage with Captain Justin Pargiter, M.C., of the 27th Light Cavalry, will take place.” Priceless!
As Trove itself explains: “Trove helps you find and use resources relating to Australia. It’s more than a search engine. Trove brings together content from libraries, museums, archives and other research organisations and gives you tools to explore and build.Trove is many things: a community, a set of services, an aggregation of metadata, and a growing repository of fulltext digital resources. Best of all, Trove is yours, created and maintained by the National Library of Australia.”
AND it is not just Australian content. Trove has content from the rest of the world. I was recently searching for details on the Burlington Cafe in Sydney. No luck on google so I choofed off to Trove. Sure enough I found one image of the cafe in 1919 and because I hadn’t ticked Australian content I came across a lot of US content as well. For instance: “Burlington, N.C.Cafe Owners form strong bond” an article published in McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, 2004 April 4.
I’m off now to find a house in Avalon in 1923 suitable for a big, possibly drunken party. Wish me luck but I don’t really need it as Trove has my back!
debbierobson 
Oh, I adore TROVE. The End.
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I know, isn’t it the best!
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What a great site, Debbie!!
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And the more you use it the more you find. Especially links to other sites.
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Thanks so much for sharing this. I’m off to explore it! 🙂
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Have fun! I’m sure you’ll come across something for your research that you have never discovered before.
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I have barely begun exploring Trove but I did find myself earlier this week proofreading and correcting the digital scans of articles about the Manchester Unity Building, the social purity movement, and UFO sightings in Melb in the early 50s. Fascinating.
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Thanks Sue. Trove will definitely appreciate. I don’t do enough correcting but if I did more I would never get any writing done. As it is Trove is a distraction. I am reading an unpublished ms from an Australian writer dated about 1922. I found it through Trove
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Haha … I know the feeling. I am 1634 on their hall of fame for doing corrections, and that’s for 11,000 or so over a few years now. Did you know that no. 1 has done more than 3.6 million (MILLION) corrections? I reckon he does it 40 hours a week as a retirement job!
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Oh my God! He must be retired! Is your gravatar the marvellous one with the 1920s woman? Oh and congrats for being no. 1634!
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Haha, I wish … No it’s a sort of cartoon figure in green and purple as I recollect!
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Sue, UFO sightings in Melbourne? Intriguing!
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Wow, that is a whole lot of proofing both by you and by that man. It’s quite heartwarming actually knowing that people devote so much time to it. The UFO sightings were in the early to mid 50s, on more than one occasion. The Argus reported on them but The Age did not ☺
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Can I ask if you are writing a short story about that?
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Yes, whisperings is a very busy lady!
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But not as busy as THAT man!
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Agreed! I’ve been using it to find books but now I’ll explore more. It seems there is much more on offer. Thanks Debbie!
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There is! Let me know what you find Hariklia.
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Great post, Debbie. I have used Trove, but not often, and I need to make greater use of it. Thanks for the reminder! 🙂
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My pleasure! Have you seen the scanned Women’s Weeklies? They are amazing. I checked the evening dresses for three of my girls in a short story set in 1953. Beats microfilche or whatever the darn thing is, any day!
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Oh yes, I hate using microform (fiche/film). Horrible stuff.
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Yep! Whichever way it is spelt
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Oh, here comes librarian lecture! Microform is the generic term, with fiche being the card shaped version, and film the, well, film roll version. Microfilm tended to be more common for newspapers. At least that’s what I found though this was not my area of expertise.
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Thanks Sue. Mystery solved.
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No, I haven’t seen them yet, Debbie, but I must! 🙂
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I stand enlightened 🙂 Thank you!
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Here’s an issue of the Women’s Weekly http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/4382667?zoomLevel=1
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