The AJHS website has added an exciting feature that gives further context to some of our large datasets.
Many AJHS burial and marriage records now include a link to relevant newspaper articles.
To show you how this works, let’s look at Mark Rosenberg’s burial record from 1919 in Broome. On the left-hand side below the main data is a button “Show Related Newspaper Results”. When clicked, articles from Newspapers around Australia are revealed.
One of the newspaper articles reveals the story of Mark Rosenberg of Broome: he was previously mayor of Kalgoorlie and later moved to Broome to run an accounting business. Sadly, he contracted influenza (presumably the Spanish flu) and then pneumonia, before he died at 59.
The newspaper article links are also found in marriages now as well.
For Sidney Goodman and Leah Parsons’ marriage in 1933 at Central Shul Bondi, one of the newspaper articles gives all sorts of details about their special day, including the Rabbi involved, the best man, the matron of honour, the wedding breakfast, several guests, and of course intricate details of the bride’s dress.
Thank you Trove
How are these links to newspaper articles added?
We can thank the National Library of Australia’s Trove for this content!
As many of you already know, Trove offers digitised historic newspapers.
Trove also has an API (Application Programming Interface), which enables two programs to speak to each other.
In this case, when the AJHS burial or marriage record loads, a request is generated to search Trove with the names of the subjects and the date of either the death or wedding.
AJHS asks Trove, Do you have any newspaper articles related to our record?
Trove then responds with newspaper articles that match the search criteria given. If there are no matches, nothing is returned and the “Show Related Newspaper Articles” button does not appear.
Take some time and explore burial and marriage records and see what interesting stories you can find!
It’s important to note that a maximum of five newspaper articles from Trove are displayed in the AJHS results. While the search criteria sent to Trove are refined to find relevant articles and limit mismatches, you can verify and expand on the results by searching directly in Trove, using Trove’s advanced search!
Help us improve the online collections
We would like to understand how you are using the AJHS collections online. If you find this new Trove content helpful, or if there are areas that need improving, please contact us and let us know
-Jeff Schneider, AJHS Web Developer and Collections Specialist