Past news history archived online

By Lachlan Ellis

Generous donations from a local bank and a community member have allowed a Moorabool historical society to put 21 years’ worth of historical newspapers online, freely accessible for the public.

The Ballan Shire Historical Society (BSHS) has been wanting to digitise more newspapers from the region for some time now, but recent donations have allowed copies of The Ballan Times from 1899 to 1920 to go up on the Trove website.

BSHS Secretary Richard Biden said it was vital to get as many historical papers digitised as possible, to ensure records aren’t lost.

“Anyone that’s interested in history will tell you that it’s vitally important to have old newspapers digitised, it’s so easy to access them and get information. They’ve got optical character recognition, so you can search for words, people’s names, anything,” Mr Biden told the Moorabool News.

“The physical copies we have are very frail. If people come in and go searching through them it’s quite possible they could be damaged. It’s best to retain them and have them digitised – then anyone, anywhere in the world, can access them.”

A donation from BSHS member Geraldine Bagwell, to go towards the digitisation of the newspapers, got the ball rolling.

“She’d come into some money and wanted to make a donation to the Society, as long as it was put towards digitisation of the newspapers. The amount she gave us wasn’t quite enough, so we approached the Ballan & District Community Bank Branch, and they agreed to give us a $5,000 donation through their community investment program,” Mr Biden said.

“The National Library have been progressively digitising papers, but it’s an expensive job. We would like to thank Geraldine Bagwell for her very kind donation, and the Ballan & District Community Bank Branch for their support to make this possible.”

You can access the archived copies of The Ballan Times by heading to Trove online and put the ‘The Ballan Times’ in the ‘Titles and places’ section.

To read the full story – Simply click on the following link

https://issuu.com/themooraboolnews/docs/mn_2022-05-31/10

in the 31 May 2022 edition
OR
pick up a paper around your town.