A love letter to Trove

Or, why I am neglecting my substack

I had been on a pretty good roll of posting here regularly, but alas, the demands of life have caught up with me. Actually one particular demand has caught up with me, which I want to talk about a bit today, as well as my deep love and thankfulness for Trove (more on that soon).

At the start of last year, moving cities meant we were looking for a new church. Church has always been a big part of my life, even if it hasn't always been an easy part. But I trust in Jesus and believe his words when he tells us to gather with other Christians.

As both of us love history, we were delighted to find that only a ten minute walk away was a historic church celebrating its 150th anniversary, placed in a historic cemetery. More than that - the church community was thriving, was toddler friendly and was actively involved in the local community - doing outreach and running playgroups, hosting a community garden and an English conversation class, amongst other things. We were welcomed in and a year later feel very at home. This church has been one of God's great kindnesses to us in the last few years.

One of the ways I got involved at my new church was by learning how to do the cemetery tour, and regularly helping with those. I also wrote a few things about different parts of the church for the 150th anniversary. One thing led to another and I found myself in a group putting together a book of the histories and stories collected for the anniversary. The goal is to provide the history of the church in a readable, accessible format.

So, that is the project that has kept me from my substack lately, as I have been busy editing together sections other people in the team have written about different parts of the church's history. It has been fun and challenging, and would be entirely impossible without Trove.

What's Trove? Hosted by the National Library of Australia, it houses digital collections from Australian libraries, universities, museums, galleries and archives. It’s free and available online all day, every day. It is a literal treasure trove of Australian history and records.

The best part for me has been the extensive collection of newspapers - the goal is make available online a copy of every Australian newspaper ever published. Every edition, every article.

Almost all newspapers can be found on their website - some have had their tiny text transcribed and are searchable, otherwise require a more in depth treasure hunt.

Trove has made researching and fact checking this book possible, and even easy - most things are fully accessible on my laptop, from my couch, while my baby girl naps! I’ve had good reason again and again to thank those working hard behind the scenes to make Trove happen, and to make Australian history accessible and freely available.

(It's also just a fun tool for finding bits and pieces of your own family's history - I found the wedding notice of my great-grandparents!)

I’ve learnt a lot about Australian and particularly Sydney history through this project, and I am still finding new things all the time. Just the other day on Trove I found a map of the royal progress through the city when Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip visited Australia - turns out they passed very close to where I now live! More importantly, I was able to verify stories we have from parishoners who recorded memories of seeing the Queen and waving to her from near the church.

Onto the last point and request of this ramble about the history project. As a small team of volunteers, we knew we weren't going to convince a traditional, commercial publisher to take on this project. Particularly in the Australian scene, projects that aren't guaranteed to make lots of profit just don't thrive, and as money-making isn't our main objective, that is probably for the best.

Instead, we are using Tellwell* to self-publish. They will help with editing, formatting, graphic design and print - but we need to pay upfront. The costs are very reasonable for the access to professionals we will get. Another benefit is that when the book is done and gets sold, almost all the money goes straight back to the church, which we hope will be another source of funding for the constant repairs and maintenance a historic building needs.

We have had some generous donations already, but we are looking to make up a gap at the moment - I know many of you already generously support my writing here on substack, but if you have the capacity, I would love if you could consider throwing $5 or so towards this project. You can follow this link to read more, donate or sign up to hear when the book is available.

*IndieMosh, the group I published my book on kids' ministry through, have now become the Australian branch of Tellwell, who are based in Canada. I had a fantastic experience with IndieMosh previously, and so far Tellwell have also been great.