Military/Service records

With the centenary of the First World War approaching, there has been a lot of interest in military and service records of family members. Below are some useful sites for locating military records and other information about Australians who served in military conflicts and records of British soldiers in Australia in the early days of settlement.

• AIF Project - provide details on the 330,000 men and women who served overseas in the (First) Australian Imperial Force, 1914-1918.
• The Australian National Archives has put all Australian First World War Service Records on line, and many World War 2 are also now becoming available
• World War II Nominal Roll - provide brief details of WW2 service personnel.
• Nominal Roll of Australian Veterans of the Korean War - provides information from the service records of individuals who served during the Korean War
• Australian War Memorial - provides biographical databases such as nominal commemorative and honour rolls, honours and awards, Australian Army war diaries, wounded missing and prisoner of war files and general information about Australian involvement in overseas conflict and peacekeeping.
• Mapping our Anzacs - investigate Australian WW1 service personnel by locality of birth or enlistment
• Debt of honour register (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) - lists details of men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died during the two world wars and Commonwealth civilians who died as a result of enemy action in the Second World War
• Australian War Graves in South Africa 1899 - 1902 - a searchable database of information from Australian Boer War memorials
• Oz-Boer database
• Soldiers and marines index 1787-1830
• Australia's redcoat settlers
• Military Historical Society of Australia
• Digger History - an unofficial history of the Australian & New Zealand Armed Services

National Library of Australia's Digital Future

The National Library of Australia (NLA) has undertaken an innovative digital library program to redevelop its infrastructure in order to manage its huge digital collections and provide access to collections from hundreds of libraries across its network. The library is expanding its online and mobile services for Australian and international users. More than 70,000 people use its Trove service each day and 22 million users were clocked up last year.  Over 3 petabytes of content is being accessed online and through mobile devices. This content includes more than 13 million digitised newspapers and hundreds of thousands of digitised Australiana items. Access to the Library’s digital content is through Trove, a free discovery and engagement service that also integrates content from more than 1000 libraries, museums, archives and research organisations. Trove offers online access to a vast catalogue of online books, newspapers, maps, music and journal articles. Trove has more than 7000 Twitter followers and tweets feature items of interest in the national collection. The NLA’s main twitter account has more than 23,000 followers. The NLA is the fourth most followed Australian government organisation and the most followed cultural institution. Using social media has proved an effective way of getting the NLA collections to online users, as increasingly, library users are online or using mobile and smart devices to download or share content. You can read more about this project at http://www.cio.com.au/article/556019/national-library-australia-invests-digital-future/

Great Aunty Alice

When doing our family history, we all need help from a great aunt at some time. If yours have all passed on, you could try Great Aunty Alice, a new website, which is a directory of independent genealogical researchers based across the UK and around the world. No matter what stage you are at with your family tree, whether you need help with a small specific problem or would like someone to carry out extensive research, Great Aunty Alice has an array of researchers for you to choose from.

The site contains listings of genealogists, some are professionals while others are amateurs who are willing to help. All genealogy research questions are handled privately in email, not on the web site. Of course, professionals would need to be paid for their time and everyone should be reimbursed for any expenses they may incur, such as travel expenses, photocopying fees, postage, and more.

The web site's owner does not receive commissions for clients the researchers receive, and each listing is written by the individual researcher explaining their services. Great Aunty Alice simply serves as a directory to help put people in touch.