Trove at Karratha Library
The Australian Heritage Festival is run every year in April and May by the National Trust. It’s the country’s largest community-driven celebration of heritage which has been running for more than 40 years.
This year, the City of Karratha was pleased to be involved. Between 18 April and 19 May, they offered a diverse range of free workshops and programs for their local community. This included workshops researching your family history using Trove and other family history resources.
We spoke with Taylor Coventry, a Librarian at Karratha Library, about the Heritage Festival and the workshops they ran.

How was Karratha Library involved in the festival?
‘The Local History team are often asked for assistance with family history research, so we thought this would be a fantastic opportunity to run classes on using Trove and other research tools. Family History WA also generously donated their time to run an online class for participants to take these new skills and apply them to writing their own family history.
'We also wanted to celebrate the history of Dampier and Point Samson and invited everyone to not only learn more about these areas via local history talks, but to bring their own memorabilia and stories to share.’

‘This year’s theme was Connections, something that we aimed our programs around. Included in our program was:
- Family history research workshops: These were engaging, hands-on sessions where participants learnt to use Trove and Ancestry.com to discover their own family history.
- Mini Museum: Part of the Karratha Library was transformed into a mini museum, where visitors were invited to touch and explore some of the unique items from the Local History collection.
- Writing Your Family History: We were fortunate to have Family History WA join us online for a very special session. They shared tips and tricks on putting pen to paper and offered helpful advice on how to write your family history.
- Preserving Your Memories: This workshop was developed to show people some easy ways to preserve memories, such as photos, objects and redundant technology.
- Dampier Memories: Everyone was invited to the historical town of Dampier to hear a talk from the Local History Librarian on Dampier and its surrounds. We shared a morning tea and conversation. Participants were also able to explore some of the physical items and photos from the archive and were invited to share their own memories.
- Point Samson Memories: The City celebrated the rich history of Point Samson and surrounds with an engaging and fun history lesson. Participants enjoyed morning tea, a mini museum and an opportunity to share their own memories.’

Tell us more about the Trove family history sessions...

‘We ran two classes on family history research and both classes were booked out (24 people in total). Participants were given hands on instructions on navigating Trove and other research tools. They were all given access to a laptop during the session and an opportunity to research their stories.'
'We started each session with a few minutes of writing up their family tree (using the Trove template) and then the Local History Librarian demonstrated how to use both Ancestry.com and Trove to discover stories and information from the past.'
'Participants were also given handouts to take home, to continue their research in their own time. We ran through what Trove was and spent some time navigating ‘Newspaper and Gazettes’. Participants were able to do their own searchers and the presenter (the City of Karratha’s Local History Librarian) offered tips and tricks on getting the most out of the search functions like using asterisks and Boolean queries.’

'It was interesting to note that a lot of people were unaware of Trove and were delighted to find out that this wonderful, free discovery tool existed. After the group had spent some time playing around, we were able to have a cuppa and a chat. The group discussion was both informative and exciting. One participant found that his relative had been a convict, another found court documents detailing a heated neighbourly argument and another found a newspaper article detailing their relative’s wedding.'
‘We had wonderful feedback about how much the groups got out of the session and the fact both sessions ran over time because participants were so engrossed in their research, was a testament to how much they were discovering on Trove.’
How are your community now using Trove after the sessions?
‘As a result of the events, a few of the participants have eagerly come into our libraries to let the Local History team know that they have continued their research and found some amazing information that they never knew existed. They have found things like shipping manifests, local newspaper advertising that mention their relatives’ names and a lot of fun social/gossip related articles.’
‘Generally, our community are usually looking for information on relatives that may have lived worked and/or passed within the City of Karratha. A lot of the time we can discover, using Trove, some aspect of their life. This might be information on business they ran, involvement in the community, or descriptions of their weddings and/or funerals.’
Is this something you would like to do again?


‘This is the first year we have run a full program for the Australian Heritage Festival, and it was an opportunity for us to gauge interest from the community.'
'Given the success of the Heritage Festival program and the engagement from the community, this is definitely something we would like to look at doing again. We had some wonderful feedback from the participants in the Family History Research session. Next year, we would like to look at ways to expand our reach and bring our sessions to other parts of our City and wider audiences.’