Becoming a new content contributor Partner
The Australian Lace Guild (Victorian Branch) are part of the Victorian collections and have recently become a Trove Partner Content Contributor. The Content Contribution package, made available in late 2023, provides smaller local history organisations the opportunity to make their collections available to all Australians through Trove.
You can find more information about this opportunity in the media release: Making history with Trove.

We spoke with Chung Leong Li, the Collections Officer at the Australian Lace Guild to learn more about why they decided to become a Trove Partner.
Chung told us that the Guild was originally introduced to the option to become a content contributor through Victorian Collections.
‘Some of us in the Lace Guild are interested in doing our own personal research and have come across Trove whilst searching for information and didn’t know that we could actually contribute to Trove to help other researchers out there until we joined Victorian Collections, who promoted becoming a Trove partner for community organisations. We believe we have a beautiful collection of lace to share with the wider community and Trove would be an added platform to showcase this and give our collection more exposure to a wider audience.’
The lace Guild collection consists of mostly lace donated by founding members of the Victorian Lace Guild from 1979. The collection includes laces in various styles and from different time periods. This includes examples of Torchon and Cluny laces from the 19th century and a high-quality lace cap from the 1700s.
‘Over several years a selection of the collection has been digitised on Victorian Collections and now recently shared with Trove. Around 120 items are catalogued from the Australian Lace Guild Victorian Branch Collection that the public can access online making it accessible to all.’

After getting in touch with Trove, the Australian Lace Guild and Trove worked together to establish them as a Trove Partner Content Contributor. There were some initial delays in communication and then essential conversations to understand the needs and requirements of the Guild. Despite these delays, the result was worth it.
‘Even though the initial setup was difficult to organise, we really appreciate the opportunity to be associated with Trove and it is worth every effort. The Victorian Branch is grateful for the opportunity Victorian Collections and Trove provides in making our lace collection accessible to all members and the world.’
‘The collection itself was donated to the Victorian Lace Guild to allow others to view and learn about the various types of laces that would now be difficult to view and therefore is of educational and historical interest.’
‘Trove actively promotes the collections of its contributors and giving us more exposure of our collection will give the wider community an opportunity to view high quality antique laces as lace making is a fading craft and being able to see quality antique lace is becoming increasing harder as these high quality laces are no longer made and difficult to acquire.’
‘There are Lace guilds in Australia that don’t have a collection of lace or others who haven’t shared their collections digitally and making our collection available digitally will give others an opportunity to view and appreciate lace and lace making.’