This arrived today in a newletter from McBeth and thought that many of you might be interested? Regards, Ray. - Immigration to Victoria - New Indexes On Monday at its annual volunteer's function, the Public Record Office Victoria (PROV), in recognition of the work of volunteers in creating an index of passengers, launched a pre-release CD-ROM of new indexes. This pre-release immigration index using Digger(tm) is available NOW for searching on computers at the PROV city Archives Centre and will be available soon at PROV's Ballarat repository. Copies of the CD containing over 700,000 passengers were given to the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies (AIGS) and the Genealogical Society of Victoria (GSV) for use by members in their Melbourne libraries. The volunteers who indexed the records are in the main represented by these societies. As a pre-release CD the entries are in draft form. The contents have not been through the extensive checking process that indexes which are published by the PROV go through. But as a finding aid the indexes will help many researchers locate passengers coming to Australia. The PROV has incorporated into the CD a process for reporting errors or ommission. WHAT RECORDS ARE ON THE CD? The British and foreign passengers 1900 to 1912 and passengers from New Zealand 1852 to 1923 are searchable by name etc. The main body of passengers from overseas ports have now been indexed from 1852 to 1912. These records are represented by VPRS 7666, 7667 and 7786 (microfiche). The gap is those passengers from British and foreign ports 1890 to 1899. These are expected to be published next year by PROV. Our thanks must be expressed to all those volunteers who have undertaken this massive indexing task so that all of us can locate family coming to Victoria. We must also express our thanks to the management and staff of PROV for taking the risk of making this index available in a limited way in a pre-release form. In the Year of the Volunteer the PROV has acknowledged the work of the volunteers in a very positive manner to the benefit of all of us. I have used the index sucessfully to locate a family arriving in Victoria about 1910. I hope it is as helpful to all of you.