New Zealand Genealogy

Pauline Weeks, a qualified librarian, has been researching genealogy for 30 years. She is a member of the Society of Australian Genealogists (SAG) and the New Zealand Society of Genealogists (NZSG) and has presented for SAG a number of times on New Zealand genealogy research as part of its education program.

We are fortunate that Pauleen will be joining us as the guest speaker for our Family History Group meeting on this coming Saturday, June 1, at 2:00pm in the Gordon Library Meeting Room adjacent to our Society Rooms at 799 Pacific Highway Gordon.

Visitors are always welcome at these meetings.

At 11:00am on the same day there will be a Family History Workshop at the Society where new internet and intranet reources will be discussed.

Trove Tuesday - A visit to your local society

The Australian Women's Weekly, now digitised on Trove, is a wonderful resource as it covers right up to 1982!


And, so many of the articles have photos - great for weddings and society occasions.


But after reading Geniaus' post this week about the extensive resources held at Ku-ring-gai Historical Society, and also our own post about Ku-pedia, this particular article seemed to reinforce these concepts nicely.

Social Media Q&A

Are you Flummoxed by Facebook? 

Baffled by Blogs? 

Thrown by Twitter?

Do you recognise the buttons on the right?

You are invited to join Jill Ball in the KHS Rooms on Thursday June 6 at 10:30 am to learn about Social Media. Jill will present a short talk on social media and how it may benefit historians and genealogists and then attempt to answer any questions you may have on the topic.

Please book via the booking sheet in the rooms, by emailing khs@khs.org.au or 'phoning the rooms on 02 9499 4568

If you have any specific Social Media questions you would like addressed please email Jill prior to the event: jillballau@gmail.com

Please share this invitation with Society members who may not use Social Media.

Book Review

Society member,  Jenny Joyce, has published an excellent book review on her blog. You can access it from this link:

http://jennyalogy.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/book-review-paul-bushell-second-fleeter.html

Library and Information Week

In Library and Information Week it is appropriate to recognise our Society Library and to thank those volunteers who select, process, organise  and maintain our specialised collection.

Ku-ring-gai Historical Society has an extensive collection of books, databases and other research materials relating to Kuring-gai, its local history, its pioneers and its built and natural heritage, including a very wide range of historical photographs and other images.  We are in the process of fully cataloguing our collection, and aim to make that available on our website in due course, so that members and other researchers will be able to discover more readily whether we have materials that may assist their own research.

So far, we have completed the cataloguing of our collection of books and many of our biographical files.  A listing of this catalogue is available here and will be updated monthly.  It is listed in title order within category, and in PDF format. Use the extensive search facilities of your PDF document reader to search by name, place, author or whatever else takes your fancy!  If clicking on the above link doesn't display the catalogue, then you probably don't have an appropriate reader installed - click here for a free download of Adobe Reader®, and follow the prompts to install it.

If you find a book or other item of interest in our catalogue, it can be consulted in our research centre; we are not a lending library.

The library and reading room at Gordon is open each Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday between 10 am and 2 pm, except the 1st Saturday of the month.

Visitors are most welcome.

KUPEDIA Progress

Our Intranet-based Historical Encyclopedia, KUPEDIA is available for use in the Society's rooms (via the prominent link on the home page of our Intranet).

The published version of KUPEDIA now has an additional 72 articles, bringing the total number of articles to 239.

These articles are extensively cross-referenced with 6,359 internal hyperlinks as well as 15 external hyperlinks. The articles also feature images relevant to the articles with 151 embedded low resolution images. Most of the articles are from early versions of the Historian originally published between June 1972 and  March 1992

The search index is also updated as part of the publication process and works extremely well. 

Please explore the updated KUPEDIA at your leisure. 

Australia's First Strike

Attendees at yesterday's General Meeting were entertained by guest speaker Ralph Hawkins, a local author and historian, who is the Archives Officer at The Society of Australian Genealogists.

Ralph Hawkins at KHS

Ralph shared the story of Australia's first strike in which a group of convicts successfully managed to earn an increase in their rations. During his talk that was supported by a range of fascinating images Ralph treated us to a number of interesting stories. Ralph's enthusiasm for his topic was infectious and those present left the event similarly enthused.

If you missed this opportunity to hear Ralph all is not lost. Your blogger has noticed that Ralph will be presenting this same talk at Hornsby Library and also at The Hornsby Historical Society in the near future. Details are available from those organisations.

More Records added to FindMyPast

The FindMyPast database is available for members to use in our Society rooms. We have received the following notification that these records have been recently added to the collection.

World Collection Records Over the past six months we have added millions of new records to our World collection. You can view the full list of World records here These records include: US Censes 1790-1940 US WW1 Draft Registration cards Irish WW1 memorial records New Zealand WW1 Soldiers records US WW2 Army enlistment records Records of Germans to America 1850-1897 Records of Italians to America 1855-1900 New Zealand electoral rolls 1853-1996 Irish court & prison registers 1790-1924 Australian school pupil indexes Ireland Births 1864-1958 Ireland Deaths 1864-1958 Ireland Marriages 1845-1958 Australian Censuses 1841-1921 Index of Irish Wills 1484-1858 Irish Burial Registers 1618-2005 Convict arrivals in New South Wales 1788-1842 If it's a while since you used this resource it would be worthwhile taking another look.

Australia’s First Successful Strike

Our next General Meeting will be held on Saturday 18 May at 2pm.

Our guest speaker is local historian Ralph Hawkins. He will present an illustrated talk based on some new research, and revealing some surprising facts from early colonial times.

The meeting is held in the meeting room between Gordon Library and our Research Rooms in the Old Gordon Public School on Pacific Highway Gordon from 2pm. 

Visitors are welcome and afternoon tea is provided.

Thank you to our Volunteers

All KHS volunteers are invited to a Thank You Luncheon to be held immediately prior to the next general meeting on Saturday 18 May.

The Society is extremely grateful for the many hours of work that our volunteers contribute. It is only through their efforts that we are able to achieve so much.

We now have over 90 volunteers!

As we are catering for this event, we need to know numbers, so please RSVP by Friday 10 May by phoning the rooms or dropping in and writing your name in the bookings folder.

Last year we ran short of food because more people came than expected, so please bring a plate if you forget to rsvp by 10 May.

The lunch will held in the meeting room between Gordon Library and our Research Rooms in the Old Gordon Public School on Pacific Highway Gordon from 12.45pm.

Irish Research Special Interest Group

A reminder about the next meeting:

The KHS Irish descendants will gather in the research rooms on Friday 10 May from 1.30pm to talk about their Irish family history.

All are welcome and you don’t have to book or be a member to come along.

Mac Users Special Interest Group

A reminder that our May meeting will be on Monday 6 May at 2pm in the research rooms. 

Most of our meetings from now on will be on the first Monday of each month, except when there is a public holiday.

If you have any specific questions, please email them in advance so they can be circulated to the group for answers.

All are welcome and you don't have to book or be a member to come along. 

Bring your laptop or iPad if you like.

Free Digital Magazine

Find My Past have notified the Society that a free magazine is available for download from this link on their site.  http://i.findmypast.com.au/newsletters/assets/fmpau/anzac/22615-online.html

To commemorate Anzac Day, findmypast and Inside History magazine have produced a special edition digital magazine, which you can download for FREE. This wonderful collaboration offers an interactive and entertaining way to learn more about family history and our military past with a number of intriguing articles written by military experts.