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.