The State Library of Victoria have started a campaign to get more people involved in fixing the Victorian newspapers on Trove.
They write …
“Help us fix digitised Victorian newspaper articles on Trove and reveal the hidden details of Victoria’s past. Old newspapers contain extraordinary insights into our history, and the Library digitises and makes available thousands of Victorian newspaper articles each year on Trove, the National Library of Australia’s digital resource hub.
The digitisation process generates ‘Electronically Translated Text’ for each article, making every word searchable. Some automated text translations contain errors, however, and crucial details can’t be found by searching. Fixing these translation errors provides access to key information that may otherwise be almost impossible to find.”
Become part of the Vicfix community
The State Library of Victoria run regular correction campaigns to fix articles on different aspects of Victorian history – they’d like you to get involved!
It’s easy to do, just choose a topic from current campaigns they list and follow their simple instructions. Whether you correct a line, a paragraph or an entire article, your contribution will bring to light the fascinating stories that make up Victoria’s rich history for everyone.
Be sure to check the Vicfix page here to see what projects are currently on the go, as well as others that have been completed. Although if you can’t see any current campaigns on this page it means they’ve already been fixed, but come back at the end of each month, as that’s when they publish new Vicfix campaigns for you to correct. In the meantime, why take a look at some of the fascinating articles in the completed campaigns, which you’ll find on the same page.
Through community effort and people correcting Trove’s historical newspapers, the history in these old papers is becoming available for everyone to access.
