Course to help you find your people

A SERIES of workshops centred around researching family history are getting underway next week at the Eureka Centre, and the free sessions are all about helping participants discover their past.

Research librarian at the Ballarat Research Hub, Simon Jacks, said he hopes the workshops give people an introduction into how to research family history.

“We don’t do people’s family tree for them, but we give them the resources and show them where to go and how to look through them,” he said. “What they do when they go away is up to them.”

The first workshop is based around getting organised when it comes to researching history.

The following sessions delve deeper into using newspaper archives, military records, ancestry sites, social media, and overseas records.

Later in the year there will be another series of sessions on finding the history of your house and how to download maps and look at parish plans.

“Were getting people started and organised, and running them through the different tools so they can keep going along,” Mr Jacks said.

The idea for the workshops came about after Mr Jacks noticed he was often being asked the same kinds of questions.

“We hope people become a bit more self-sufficient,” he said.

“We’re quite happy to help people, that’s what we’re here for, but if people can go away and at least have a little bit of a play themselves it builds up their skills.

“Ballarat has a wealth is history and a lot of it is untapped and we would like to show that the Eureka centre is offering more to the community than the museum.”

The first session will be held Wednesday, 15 March. To book email [email protected].