Rochelle: Thank you for joining us for today’s webinar with Trove and the National Library of Australia. I’m Rochelle –

Romi: And I'm Romi, hello.

Rochelle: And we work in Trove Partnerships for Trove Collaborative Services. This webinar aims to introduce you to searching Trove. The National Library of Australia acknowledges Australia’s first nations peoples, the first Australians as the traditional owners and custodians of this land and give respect to the elders past and present and through them to all Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

So what is Trove? Trove can be split into two parts. The first is that it is an online service developed by the National Library of Australia which brings together records describing items from collections in many different libraries and other institutions. Trove does not manage or hold any other items but if you are looking for a resource Trove can help you locate it if it is held by one of the hundreds of Australian libraries and institutions we are partnered with.

The second part is the digitised record part, the newspapers, photos and much more that you can see, read and search for on Trove. That’s a really basic description and Trove is a huge resource and is getting bigger every day. We can’t cover everything today but we are aiming to give you all a basic introduction to searching on Trove and are hoping to do more webinars in the future. This is what the Trove homepage looks like.

So let’s get started and today as mentioned we will be introducing you to searching Trove from basic searches through to searches with a little more detail. Roney, do you want to start us off?

Romi: Yes, thanks very much. Let’s get started with doing a basic search. Trove has proven to be popular for doing family history research so let’s use that as an example to search with. I’m looking for a Jean Robertson who was a race car driver in the 1930s. Let’s use this information in our search. So on the Trove homepage go to the search field and enter the name. We’re doing a basic search so we’ll leave the category menu alone and select the green magnifying glass button to start searching across all Trove categories. Trove will then generate a search results list for Jean Robertson and variations for every category. The category options are available along the top row and vertically in the same order.

You’ll see that this vertical list offers newspapers and gazettes, magazines and newsletters etc just like the top row. From here it’s up to you where you want to go. The newspapers and gazettes category tends to be popular for a lot of family history research because they’re digitised and accessible immediately but if you’d like to preview the offerings first have a look at the vertical list. Sure enough there are articles that feature Jean Robertson and this list is showing the top three results. I want to see all of them now so I will select the See All button at the bottom right of the category. Now note that this button and the newspapers button back at the top row, they direct you to the same content. So for example if I wanted to see all the results for images I can select from the top row or go down to its equivalent in the vertical list and then select the See All button. Every category that has search results will have this button.

So let’s go back up to newspapers and gazettes and I will select the See All button. So here are all the newspapers and gazettes results for Jean Robertson and variations of the name. There are about 189,000 results available and you can sort them by relevance or date order with this dropdown menu. Now I’d rather not look through 180,000 results for the Jean Robertson whom I want so I’m going to narrow down this list by adding another search term. Let’s go back to the search field. You’ll remember that Jean Robertson was a race car driver so I’ll try adding the word, race. When I hit the magnifying glass button for a new search with these terms it has narrowed down the quantity by about a third but we can narrow down this list even more by using the Refine Your Results column on the right-hand side. As you can see there are sections that have a lot of offerings and to see them all you select Show More.

Every box that you check can narrow down your results by criteria such as type of item, place of publication, the publication title and even the date. The Jean Robertson I’m looking for was alive in the 1930s so I’ll narrow down my results by selecting Newspaper. I will choose a date range. So note that every time you select a checkbox the other options disappear. You cannot make multiple selections per most criteria in basic searches. It is possible to do this in advanced searching but that is something that we’ll explore in another webinar. So if you want to explore other options you will need to uncheck and start again.

So now I’ve been narrowed down to about 13,000 results, more specifically for Jean Robertson and race in the newspaper format and in this date range. You’ll also see that the new selections I made can be seen up here in the form of tags and you can remember them if you want by selecting the X. Now it’s just a matter of selecting what articles interest me. There are search results that span over quite a few pages and I can see each page by selecting from the page numbers along the bottom of the list but let’s go back up to the top now, we’ll stick with the first page.

Let's find an article that applies to our search. Let’s try this one. Here is my first selection with Jean Robertson highlighted in the original newspaper and its digitised text in the transcript column.

Rochelle: It’s also important to note here that the National Library of Australia focuses on digitising newspapers published before 1954 on the general understanding that they are out of copyright. So generally on Trove only newspaper content that is published up to and including 1954 is available digitally. You’ll find that some newspaper titles published after 1955 are available. That’s due to individual agreements that were made with the publisher. If you need content published after 1954 it’s still possible to find on Trove, just not in immediate digitised form. If you contact Trove support we can put you in the right direction.

Now these are the results in newspaper gazettes. What if I want to find a name in another category like magazines?

Romi: Yes, no problem, we can do that. So let’s go back to our search results page. Now remember that the keyword to be used can be applied to all Trove categories here. There’s no need to start a brand new search. So we’ve retained Jean Robertson and race and from here I can choose to see the results for Jean Robertson in images even or unpublished items but sticking with your suggestion, Rochelle, let’s select the magazines and newsletters category. It looks like I'm lucky here too. Let’s try this one.

Now when I select a magazine article I’ll be directed firstly to the record for the entire publication, select the read button to see your options. It turns out that there is an option that’s digitised which I’ll select and here is the magazine with instances of Jean Robertson and race highlighted. Note that this magazine here looks similar to the newspaper viewer. These blue boxes indicate the page numbers where the highlighted search terms appear in the magazine. You can scroll down and select the page that you want to see but remembering that our initial search found Jean Robertson on page 49 so we’re already where we need to be.

I’ll use my mouse to move around the original page by clicking and holding down as I move around and find the highlighted words and I can magnify in and out as necessary. So there’s race, let’s find Jean Robertson. There she is, Jean Robertson. Now to see the transcription text for this article I will select the text icon on the left-hand side. Now I’d like to find where Jean Robertson is mentioned here. If the transcript text is long I can scroll down until I find it or I can just do a word find command to locate the name. Generally you can do this by using the control and F keys on your keyboard and this will bring up the word find command box and I will enter Jean and see where that goes. Great. So here is where Jean appears in the transcript column and I can just press escape to get out of the word find command.

Rochelle: That’s great. Is it possible to download something when you find it? It’d be great to keep a copy.

Romi: Absolutely. There are a lot of digitised items in Trove that can be downloaded and if it is an option it will appear in the Trove viewer. Trove’s newspaper articles, for example, are one of the popular categories for downloading so I’ll use that to demonstrate. Let’s go back to our original search results and let’s select the newspapers and gazettes category and I’ll just choose the first available article. Now on the left-hand side there is an icon of a piece of paper with a downward-pointing arrow on it and that is the download button. When you select it choose whether you want to download the article or a whole page or the entire issue. Now if you choose page or issue, PDF will be the only format available. But I’ll choose to download the article which will give me more options.

Now text format will generate the article in a new browser tab. Text will generate the article in a new browser tab ready for use according to the options of your browser or computer. Image and PDF formats will have size options and you can select them before doing the download. The you just select the green view button and your image will be generated in a new browser tab ready for you to use. So a reminder that items on Trove are only downloadable if they are viewable in a Trove viewer such as the newspaper viewer I just demonstrated with and if they have the download icon available. If Trove directs you to view an item on an external website of a holding organisation such as a library or a gallery, if that site offers downloading it might have different methods to do it and I can show you examples of this while searching for an image.

So let’s start a new search from the Trove homepage. I’m going to search for the New South Wales town, Brewarrina, and I’ll look at the images, maps and artefacts category, magnifying glass button and images, maps and artefacts. There are lots of results here in many different formats available at various institutions and organisations such as maps at the National Library, photos from the Australian National University and here’s a photograph from the State Library of South Australia.

Now if you select the photo and select view you’ll see that that library is listed as its viewing option. Now when you select it you will be directed out of Trove and to the item record at the State Library of South Australia’s website and they will have their own download method. This library will also have their own conditions for access to the content. If you need assistance you’ll need to contact this library.

So let’s go back to our Trove search results to find images that I can download. You’ll notice that although these are search results for items matching Brewarrina they’re not all necessarily digitised or even accessible. This might be because the holding organisation hasn’t digitised the item yet or there’s a cultural safety consideration or the holding organisation only permits access to its own members or students. So I'm going to narrow down the results in the Refine Your Results column and in the access section I will select online free access.

Now understandably images are popular amongst family history researchers and particularly maps and a lot of them are available for free download in high resolution. So I will select a Brewarrina map. Let’s try this one. I’ll select the view option and here it is, in an image viewer. Here is the download button and it turns out that this map’s available in JPEG and TIF format and once you’ve selected you just press the Start Download or Download button. It’s that easy. So we’ve covered searching for a name and keyword in newspapers, magazines and images and how to download too. Rochelle, what else can people search for on Trove?

Rochelle: People can also search Trove in languages other than English and we do have some amazing resources in a number of languages. So like any search we’ll start in the search box and enter our search term. In this case I'm going to use Yuma which is Gamilaraay, a first nation language from New South Wales, word for hello. Like any other search you can pick your category and either go down or up the top and today let's have a look at books and libraries. We can see that some results come up and again I’m going to look at Refine Your Results on the side here. A good one to look for when you’re doing language is Language. They’re the different languages there and this lets you filter for items in the language. It may be joint English in the language or purely the language you click on or perhaps multiple languages but a significant part should be the language you pick.

In this case let’s go Gamilaraay, there we go into results. So if I open the first one here you can see it goes through and I might click Reid and yeah, it’s digitised. Again highlighted. You can see that it goes through different vocab words and there is a lot in Gamilaraay.

Romi: Rochelle, I also see that your search also accommodates the spelling of Gamilaraay with a G and K so you’re safe to try different versions.

Rochelle: Yes. Thanks, will do. I’ll pass back to you.

Romi: Well we hope that this introduction to Trove searching has been helpful to you. If you would like more information about searching and using Trove we recommend visiting the help page. This is a great starting point for you to find answers to a lot of questions. So just go to any Trove page and select the help link at the top right corner. The help sections contain a wide range of content that can answer your questions about using Trove from step-by-step searching instructions to managing your Trove account. Chances are that your question can be answered straight away and you can get on with your Trove research.

Rochelle: This is also the place you go for help by making specific and advanced searches, information on first Australian content and how to use the Trove viewer for the item that you’re looking at. There’s also information about buying items, getting copies, copyright and help with using Trove on your computer system.

Romi: Now if you can’t find what you need, if you have a specific question about using Trove or would like assistance with your research select the About tab at the top right corner of Trove pages. Go to the Contact Us section to select the type of enquiry you have.

Rochelle: This section is helpful if you are doing family history research and you don’t know where to start, if you have a problem while using Trove or even if you have an interesting Trove experience that you’d like to share.

Romi: Thanks very much for joining us and we wish you success with your Trove research.

Rochelle: Thanks for joining us and good luck with your searching.