Kerry I wholeheartedly agree with you. I have over 30 years of research along with thousands of photographs and documents. Many documents are stores often on line but it my particular assortment that becomes relevant to my research and family interests. I have a tree on Ancestry which I have privatised but have latley wondered what happens to that tree should I die and no one else has access to it. I could pass this on to my children but if they are not interested (as they mostly show at this stage) the password would get put aside and forgotten about. The cemetery sites with photographs etc have been many many hours of work and dedication (even if is is addictive) and I have had many emails thanking me for my efforts from those who have found their ancestors graves from a distance. There is also the knowledge that headstones wear or get broken after some time, so to have a photographic record of these stored somewhere is almost a must. Newspapers all over the world are currently being digitised and put on line for all to access, and these are being kept mostly by libraries and I would expect to be ongoing. Kerry other than your email, what have you done so far to ensure the longivity of our cemetery records and what can people to do help, or are you not sure where to go with this information? Carmel

(My apology if this message turns up twice but the original was not received by myself) I have been given the following entry by a kind reader, but it raises the question, why would both the place of death and the Registration Place both be shown as "Victoria" and not as a town or city? Name: James TODD Death Place: Victoria Age: 53 Registration Year: 1879 Registration Place: Victoria Registration Number: 8712 Of course not having parents names shown will mean I cannot claim him but the question remains, why only "Victoria". Your thoughts please kind readers. Paul in Sydney

Depends on the Registra at the time, was there an inquest for this person? The place is not always accurate anyway. For example a birth may registered in one place when it took place a long way from there, My grandmother was living in Arthurs Creek and births were often registered around Fitzroy or Collingwood as that is where family lived and the child would be registered when they went to visit. Also registration years can differ. I found one registered in 1918 when he had been born in the late 1800s. He needed to go overseas and found he did not have a birth registration. If however you are looking for children of a couple and find this you would wonder why there is a big age difference between children. I also, while transcribing a cemetery record book, found a whole group of people registered a few years after their deaths, we could not work out why these people were buried before they died. Our guess is that there was a bunch of death records found and had been forgotten to be sent to the BDMs record office. It could also be these were not filled in properly at the time and so BDM have just put it as victoria. Carmel -----Original Message----- From: australia-cemeteries-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:australia-cemeteries-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Ironside Sent: Monday, 8 November, 2010 4:39 PM To: australia-cemeteries@rootsweb.com Subject: [AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES] Death reg'n entry (My apology if this message turns up twice but the original was not received by myself) I have been given the following entry by a kind reader, but it raises the question, why would both the place of death and the Registration Place both be shown as "Victoria" and not as a town or city? Name: James TODD Death Place: Victoria Age: 53 Registration Year: 1879 Registration Place: Victoria Registration Number: 8712 Of course not having parents names shown will mean I cannot claim him but the question remains, why only "Victoria". Your thoughts please kind readers. Paul in Sydney ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hi Carmel, Just a comment on Cemetery Trust records. Someone once asked me why I would record the memorials of a cemetery that had it's trust records on-line. The answer is that they are different types of records. Until 2005 there was no set standard for Cemetery Trust record keeping. These standards appear ambiguous and are usually ignored, that's if the secretary is aware of them Most trust records I've seen depend on the mood of the trust secretary at any given time and vary over the years with the changes of secretarys. It's quite common for trusts to use their "Bookings" or "Invoice" books as their records. In one cemetery I had a group of plaques all around 20 years out of sync with the dates the trust gave me. When I asked it turned out that they all got kicked out of Springvale for not paying their rent and the date given was when they were booked into their new cemetery. I queried another one who died in 1912 but was listed as 2002 and was told that that was when the memorial was paid for. I often see cemetery records that are a mixture of trust, memorials and the BDM's and wonder how they can mix three different types of records. It just doesn't work. Yours, Garry Batt. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carmel M Reynen" <fcfibre2@bigpond.com> To: <australia-cemeteries@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, November 08, 2010 4:22 PM Subject: Re: [AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES] Death reg'n entry > Depends on the Registra at the time, was there an inquest for this person? > The place is not always accurate anyway. For example a birth may > registered > in one place when it took place a long way from there, My grandmother was > living in Arthurs Creek and births were often registered around Fitzroy or > Collingwood as that is where family lived and the child would be > registered > when they went to visit. > Also registration years can differ. I found one registered in 1918 when > he > had been born in the late 1800s. He needed to go overseas and found he did > not have a birth registration. If however you are looking for children of > a > couple and find this you would wonder why there is a big age difference > between children. I also, while transcribing a cemetery record book, found > a > whole group of people registered a few years after their deaths, we could > not work out why these people were buried before they died. Our guess is > that there was a bunch of death records found and had been forgotten to be > sent to the BDMs record office. > It could also be these were not filled in properly at the time and so BDM > have just put it as victoria. > > Carmel > > -----Original Message----- > From: australia-cemeteries-bounces@rootsweb.com > [mailto:australia-cemeteries-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Ironside > Sent: Monday, 8 November, 2010 4:39 PM > To: australia-cemeteries@rootsweb.com > Subject: [AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES] Death reg'n entry > > (My apology if this message turns up twice but the original was not > received > by myself) > > I have been given the following entry by a kind reader, but it raises the > question, why would both the place of death and the Registration Place > both > be shown as "Victoria" and not as a town or city? > > Name: James TODD > Death Place: Victoria > Age: 53 > Registration Year: 1879 > Registration Place: Victoria > Registration Number: 8712 > > Of course not having parents names shown will mean I cannot claim him but > the question remains, why only "Victoria". > > Your thoughts please kind readers. > > Paul in Sydney > > > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' > without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' > without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hi Paul, Looking at the entry on the Pioneer index, it states he was born in Ireland, no mention of Victoria being the death place. With people dying in lunatic asylums, quite often the place in not mentioned because of the stigma attached to these places, but the death certificate should have more information. I have had a few with Victoria in the birth/death place and the actual certificate has more details. But why Victoria was mentioned in the first plce I have no idea Regards Bernadette Salter -----Original Message----- From: australia-cemeteries-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:australia-cemeteries-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Ironside Sent: Monday, November 08, 2010 4:39 PM To: australia-cemeteries@rootsweb.com Subject: [AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES] Death reg'n entry (My apology if this message turns up twice but the original was not received by myself) I have been given the following entry by a kind reader, but it raises the question, why would both the place of death and the Registration Place both be shown as "Victoria" and not as a town or city? Name: James TODD Death Place: Victoria Age: 53 Registration Year: 1879 Registration Place: Victoria Registration Number: 8712 Of course not having parents names shown will mean I cannot claim him but the question remains, why only "Victoria". Your thoughts please kind readers. Paul in Sydney ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hi Paul; The James TODD noted below was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery on 14 July 1879. He was listed as a Blacksmith with parents unknown, place of birth as Ireland. It was thought he might have been married. Age given as 53 years at time of death. He died of the disease of the heart and the brain. There was an inquest into his death by the Coroner. James Todd died at the Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum. As he was admitted as an inmate the law required any deaths in the Asylum must have an Inquest held into the deaths. As there was an Inquest into his death he was then an inmate at the Asylum. Not too sure what data you were sent but the Victorian BDM Indexes (Pioneers) note him as having parents- Unknown and place of birth as Ireland. I can only surmise that whoever supplied you with the data just noted his death as Victoria as he was in the Victorian Indexes. Up until 1880 the Victorian BDM Indexes for deaths only supplied the place of birth. After 1880 the place of death was given. Hope this helps. Regards, David Weatherill PS: Paul, you picked a person I had data on in my research into burials/deaths in the Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum. It is interesting that he was not buried in the Asylum Cemetery. There were 800 burials in the old cemetery before it was officially closed. Most deaths by the late 1870s were no longer buried in the Asylum Cemetery, but buried at Melbourne General Cemetery, probably in a common grave. David -----Original Message----- From: australia-cemeteries-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:australia-cemeteries-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Ironside Sent: Monday, 8 November 2010 4:39 PM To: australia-cemeteries@rootsweb.com Subject: [AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES] Death reg'n entry (My apology if this message turns up twice but the original was not received by myself) I have been given the following entry by a kind reader, but it raises the question, why would both the place of death and the Registration Place both be shown as "Victoria" and not as a town or city? Name: James TODD Death Place: Victoria Age: 53 Registration Year: 1879 Registration Place: Victoria Registration Number: 8712 Of course not having parents names shown will mean I cannot claim him but the question remains, why only "Victoria". Your thoughts please kind readers. Paul in Sydney

Hi Again Paul; One thing I meant to say in my previous reply was that it was not uncommon for deaths/death certificates at the Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum to have little knowledge on the person and many inmates who died were just listed as "Parents Unknown" on their death certificates. The Asylum admission data usually did not have much personal detail on the person admitted. Most of the death certificates I have for deaths (and burials) at the Asylum/Asylum Cemetery have very little personal data on the deceased. Cheers, David -----Original Message----- From: australia-cemeteries-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:australia-cemeteries-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Ironside Sent: Monday, 8 November 2010 4:39 PM To: australia-cemeteries@rootsweb.com Subject: [AUSTRALIA-CEMETERIES] Death reg'n entry (My apology if this message turns up twice but the original was not received by myself) I have been given the following entry by a kind reader, but it raises the question, why would both the place of death and the Registration Place both be shown as "Victoria" and not as a town or city? Name: James TODD Death Place: Victoria Age: 53 Registration Year: 1879 Registration Place: Victoria Registration Number: 8712 Of course not having parents names shown will mean I cannot claim him but the question remains, why only "Victoria". Your thoughts please kind readers. Paul in Sydney

Carmel Personally I think the best solution for longevity of family history research and associated resources like cemetery photos etc lies with our national and state institutions: the libraries, archives, museums and galleries. Each of these has a charter or mandate to collect and preserve various kinds of material related to Australia or their particular state. While the precise details of their charter and current collecting policies do vary, nonetheless they do take these responsibilities very seriously, and they do receive ongoing funding from the state and federal governments to do so. I think material deposited with them has the best chance of surviving for another century, better than family history societies (many of whom are challenged by declining income due to declining memberships in a world of WWW-accessible genealogical resources and online competitors such as Ancestry). However, our national and state institutions face a number of challenges. They have put a lot of effort into physical preservation of paper-based materials (mostly the libraries and archives) and actual objects (mostly the museums and galleries) as that was what was needed in the past. Now with the digital era, they are faced with the issue (and in particular the costs) of trying to digitize existing material. Many of us are enjoying the benefits of the libraries of Australia who paid to digitize some of our major historic newspapers -- see here if you haven't had the pleasure: http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ and would probably agree with me that the unleashed potential of digitized resources like these newspapers is absolutely enormous. The other challenge is how to best collect and preserve born-digital material (that is, material that started its life in digital form, e.g. a Word document, or a photo taken on a digital camera). Firstly there is an enormous amount of digital material being generated. For example, when publishing your family history meant writing a large book and printing a run of 500 books, only a few of us did it. Now we can all generate loads of reports straight out of our family tree software and put them up on WWW sites or uploading a GEDCOM onto WorldConnect or Ancestry and many more of us are doing that than publishing books, so there is now a lot more family history published, most of it "born digital". The problem with born-digital material is its limited lifetime. This often surprises people, but digital material is always held in a file format (e.g. a Word document for text, a JPG file for a photo, an MP3 file for music). But the lifetime of file formats is relatively short, say 10 or so years, before it is superseded by a new and improved format. Many of us will have some documents written in early word processors that we cannot now read. Similar remarks apply to the physical storage of digital information. Does anyone have a 5-and-a-quarter-inch floppy drive on their computer any more? How much longer will computers have USB ports and DVD drives? Technological change means that born-digital materials must be constantly translated into new file formats and onto new physical media in order to survive into the future. There is a cost to doing this and some of those translations can lose information (I am sure many of you will have seen your GEDCOM files "lose information" when importing into someone else's software). So, to answer your question, yes, I am talking with national and state institutions about these issues (although in the broader context, not just for family history and cemetery photos). If you are interested to see the organizations who are part of these discussions (a series of workshops I am running across a number of capital cities over the past few months), see here: http://www.crc-glam.net/organisations Part of those discussions includes collecting materials creating by the public, but again the costs of storage and the digitizing/translation costs for that material have to be found "somewhere". Kerry