PLENTY of homes built in the first half of the 1900s are being renovated, which has uncovered snippets of history.
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As residences from the time undergo renovations into the next century, the discovery of the nation’s metropolitan and regional mastheads are prompting a renewed interest in cultural preservation.
Inverell Library manager Sonya Lange explained the importance of retaining the nation’s first draft of history last week, revisiting copies of The Inverell Times and surrounding regional mastheads preserved on micro-film last week.
“The idea of preserving (newspapers) has been around for a while, but I think people are becoming more aware of just how valuable the resources are,” she said.
“I think people are often intrigued by it because you really catch a glimpse of what was important and what life was like.”
“People are always fascinated by the papers.”
The growing cultural interest has sparked a major digitisation movement among metropolitan and regional public libraries.
“The National Library of Australia is digitising newspapers and making them available online and the intention is that eventually they will digitise all of Australia’s newspapers including the small country town ones,” Ms Lange said.
It’s an exciting prospect for history buffs, looking to catch up on the latest in old news.
“The digitisation of things like newspapers has never been accessible to so many more people,” Ms Lange said.
“They can get online, search, look at the articles, it is quite amazing to think that we can do that.”
Ms Lange said the movement to make persevered newspaper editions widely accessible has prompted a new kind of cultural research, particularly with regard to Australia’s business heritage.
“We have had some people in here doing research and one of the ways they’re researching is looking at the paper and looking at the advertisements so they can trace when a business was active,” Ms Lange said.
As the region’s heritage becomes increasingly digitised, Ms Lange said there are still a number of blank spaces in the local records, but as early era residences go under renovations historians are hopeful of gradually drawing the pieces together.
