NOTE Although Excel is now the best-known spreadsheeting program, it does cost money and some members may prefer to experiment with one of the free alternatives. You could try Open Office Calc or Google Sheets. Most people have little difficulty switching between these programs because the basic operations are the same. Does anyone remember VisiCalc?
In response to a request from Group members, Les presented an introduction to the use of the spreadsheeting program, Microsoft Excel. You can review Les's slides in this pdf document and can download a (small) sample data file on which to practise. If you are interested in the full csv (comma-separated value) files that Les used, they are available for download from the Queensland Sate Archives.
NOTE Although Excel is now the best-known spreadsheeting program, it does cost money and some members may prefer to experiment with one of the free alternatives. You could try Open Office Calc or Google Sheets. Most people have little difficulty switching between these programs because the basic operations are the same. Does anyone remember VisiCalc?
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Rosemary Koppitke described the range of information that is readily available in these categories of records that can add interesting meat to the bare bones of a family story. She led us through the history of almanacs (which included lists of the "quality" citizens of the district) to publication of more comprehensive post office directories which referenced every household. She illustrated the different types of general directory including alphabetical, street address and occupation (which were sometimes combined in a single binding) and the development of specialist directories (such as medical, legal or ecclesiatical lists). As part of her case studies, Rosemary emphasised that while having an address for your ancestors at a given time is great; even more value is gained when you use mapping tools to (for example) plot a man's likely route from home to work and then use the directories (or Google Street View) to reimagine what he would have seen each day. She also demonstrated the types of advertisements published in directories that can illustrate the industries in which your ancestors worked or the businesses they dealt with. In addition to the range of almanacs and directories on CD held in our library collection, Rosemary listed some excellent on-line sources. Bob demonstrated how (with a little lateral thinking) the advanced catalogue search can be used to extract particular records from the World War I Servicemen data. There was an Irishman from Woodford who enlisted but was medically discharged without ever geting a service number. Who was he? Click on the image below to find out. The key is to place your search terms against the correct fields. The Anywhere field will work but is likely to produce a large number of possibly confusing results. Title will hold the man's name and service number (if he has one). Everything else of interest (to non-librarians) will be under General Notes. Try keywords first and only switch to phrase or exact match if you get too many results for a multi-word query.
Note that there is no value in searching for terms that will be found in every record. So avoid World War, 1914-18, Army, Australia etc. Your aim should be to use a combination of search terms that only your target(s) will match. |
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