To celebrate National Family History Week, from the 29 July – 8 August 2011, LINC Tasmania held these free events throughout the state:

A series of talks were presented in the Hub, Level 2, 91 Murray Street, Hobart, along with displays throughout the building, and a film screening in the izone.

The talks covered such topics as tracing the history of your house and its people, with Tony Marshall providing tips on researching a house and the people who have lived there in the past. In the session titled Family history research using Trove Digitised Newspapers, Anthony Black gave an overview of the fantastic resource Trove, and how it can be used by family historians. Alexander Barr provided an introduction to the types of resources available through the organisation with a talk titled Family history resources available from LINC Tasmania. Stephanie McDonald, Conservator for the Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office shared her expertise in the session Looking after your family photos. To finish off the week, guest speaker Colette McAlpine from the Female Convict Research Group spoke about Tasmania’s Female Convicts.

 Stephanie McDonald

 Tony Marshall

Throughout the week the film Some Early Glimpses of Hobart was shown in the izone. This is a compilation of films of Hobart spanning a period of four decades, showing life in Hobart as well as the changes and development of the city and environs during this time.

Glenorchy LINC celebrated National Family History Week with a foyer display and a talk on convict records presented by Caroline Homer (Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office) and Jenny Jerome (Glenorchy LINC). The presentation gave an overview of the ‘who, when, where, what and how’ of Tasmania’s convict period, showcasing LINC Tasmania’s web site and points of entry to the convict index and records. Examples of convict records were shown along with hints and tips for getting the best out of online digitised records.

Access the index to Tasmanian Convicts here

 Caroline Homer with a digitised convict record

The Launceston Family Album is a collection of passport-sized photographs of people who had season tickets to the Tasmanian International Exhibition held in Launceston in 1891-92. The original album was donated to the Library in 1950. In 2006 a website was created and the community was invited to contribute information about the people in the album. A talk, presented by Marion Sargent, was held in the Library about the project. This was followed by an interactive session with members of the audience able to look at people of interest in the album through the website. The session was rounded off by participants browsing the original album, books, newspaper clippings, indexes and other artefacts relating to the International Exhibition.

Find more information about the Launceston Family Album project here