Mapping our ANZACS

Special Event | Updated 1 decade ago

Alan Ralph, State Director Perth, National Archives of Australia, and Marjorie Bly, Assistant Director - Access & Communications Perth, National Archives of Australia
11.00am, Thursday 17 March 2011
11.00am, Sunday 20 March 2011

Please meet at the Museum front desk at 10.50am for 11.00am start

Hundreds of thousands of Australians are discovering more about World War I diggers and their communities by visiting Mapping our Anzacs, a website developed by the National Archives (see www.mappingouranzacs.naa.gov.au). The website has received well over a million unique visits since its release in 2008.

The website allows people to explore the impact of World War I on their own communities. By browsing a series of maps, website visitors can view the names of Anzacs who were born or enlisted in more than 10,000 places across the world. They can then follow links to find out more about individual service personnel, including access to digitised copies of their service record. Visitors can also attach mementoes of their own World War I diggers through the online scrapbook.

Before Mapping our Anzacs was available, researchers had to know who they were looking for. Now, they can follow the connections they find between people and places. Browsing will lead users to links to other service personnel who enlisted or were born at the same place, or who had the same next of kin.

The project has been enormously popular. Visitors have added over three and a half thousand posts to the scrapbook and left nearly 11 thousand tributes to family members. The scrapbook entries include newspaper death notices, and photographs of medals and plaques, as well as family pictures of and stories about those who served, providing an extra community-based dimension to the official government records of those who served Australia in a time of war.

Join Alan Ralph and Marjorie Bly as they lead a free introductory seminar on how to use the website, and how to add your own scrapbook entry or leave a tribute.

BOOKINGS: Enquiries on 9427 2877, book online using the below links or at the front desk of the Perth Museum.