A prestigious State award has been won by Ballarat & District Genealogical Society. This brings more history and tech kudos to Ballarat.
Victorian Community History Awards 2016
Public Record Office of Victoria and Royal Historical Society of Victoria
WINNER OF CENTENARY OF WW1 AWARD 2016
This "recognises the best work or project on the impact of WW1 on Victoria or Victorians".
BALLARAT & DISTRICT GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY INC
for
HOME FRONT BALLARAT WW1
www.ballaratww1.org.au
WEBSITE DESIGNED BY ALPHAVILLE
(Andrew Wise and Jodie Kaine)
The Awards ceremony was held Monday 17th Oct 2016, Pavilion, Arts Centre, Melbourne. The results are online.
http://prov.vic.gov.au/community-programs/grants-awards/victorian-community-history-awards
The winners-booklet can be downloaded via a link at the bottom of the page. It has the judges' comments for the BDGS project.
This impressive online database comprises biographies of over 2500 individuals, information about local war work in Ballarat and district, both voluntary and paid, and an image gallery of items used in an accompanying video.
The database is easy to search through alphabetical listings of names and organisations, each with further information. It is dynamic in that it can be supplemented as new material becomes available. The video successfully blends local material with the progress of the war.
The whole entry represents a considerable research effort by a community organisation. It joins a number of excellent local studies of the home front received in this category in the past two years.
It provides a very valuable community resource.
2016 has been an exceptional year for the Society as the recipient of top local and state awards. Firstly – the Greg Binns Award for "Outstanding Community Contribution to Heritage."
This was a surprise announcement at the Ballarat Heritage Awards in May, hosted by the National Trust of Australia (Vic) Ballarat Branch and the City of Ballarat.
And now this one from Victoria's peak community history bodies which rewards the Society with $1500. You will be pleased to know that we are hoping to use the bulk of this for more digitisation of the Ballarat Courier. By 9th Dec this year the National Library of Australia will have until April 1880 on Trove. We are hoping that our prize money will pay for a few more years into the 1880s.
Please visit www.ballaratww1.org.au and go to ABOUT for more information about the project.
Return visits to this dynamic free website will be rewarded as the project continues to grow and increase the genealogical and historical information available for those poignant war years.
We now maintain all elements of the website 'in-house' as key members have acquired the necessary expertise to work with the Joomla platform.
Jennifer Burrell
BDGS Electronic Publication and Researcher
