Helen V Smith, who am I?

Thank you Julie for this great idea and I look forward to reading and sharing genealogy, local history and history tit-bits from around the world.

I'll start with a bit about me. I live in Brisbane Australia and have been researching since 1986 when a plaintive comment from my Mother about not knowing anything about her Grandfather whom she had never met, due to a family split.

Well that started things off as I did a bit of research, found out some information for her and became hooked. In fact 27 years later I am still finding out information about George Howard Busby! In fact I recently found a new photograph of him as the Queensland State Library had digitised a new photo relating to World War One and had put it online. Luckily it was labelled with names! You have to understand my excitement as previously the only photo of this gentleman was one I had found in a newspaper when he enlisted and went off to Gallipoli.

Me taken on one of the Unlock the Past cruises

I have a few blogs my main one is  From Helen V Smith's Keyboard and I also have one on Historical Medical Miscellany, as being a Public Health Microbiologist and Molecular Epidemiologist I have a strong interest in health history and public health and how this affected our ancestors. I also run the Quested One Name Study which is registered with the Guild of One Name Studies and have a blog for that too although it is still very much in its infancy.

I love my tech toys and recently wrote about my favourites in an interview with Thomas MacEntee on the "How I Hack Genealogy" site.

As mentioned there I am the President of the Southern Suburbs Branch of the Genealogical Society of Queensland, Queensland Regional representative for the Guild of One Name studies, everything at HVS Research and have been doing an increasing amount of lecturing as well as writing. 

I am very excited to be again lecturing on the 4th Unlock the Past cruise leaving on the 4th February visiting the southern capitals of Australia and even more so to be lecturing on the 5th Unlock the Past cruise which is circumnavigating England and Scotland in July this year along with a number of very eminent presenters from the UK, USA and Australia. I have been a regular presenter and cruiser since the first cruise as  I find cruising to be the best of all worlds. I get to attend a family history conference, present and meet lots of family historians while being looked after and get to do some touristy things all without having to pack and repack. Yes I am becoming addicted! There are so many options available now. Unlock the Past are even planning to do a conference on a river cruise soon.

I will also be presenting at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live conference in London in February and am a keynote presenter at the "Harvest Your Family Tree" conference in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada in September.

I will leave you with a few of the sites I use regularly:

Trove the National Library  of Australia site that has digitised newspapers (totally free to access) from around Australia, photos from a variety of collections, maps, thesis, and so much more! If you ahve any Australian research definitely worth a visit.

The Queensland State Archives is the repository and Archives for Government documents. They have done a huge amount of work in indexing, with the help of volunteers and there are a lot of indexes available on the site. They also have digitised a number of documents and photos which are also available. Along with the indexes a lot of work has been done with the catalogue in that there is now an increasing number of items that have been indexes to name level.

Text Queensland is another great site that is a collection of full-text, digitised, downloadable resources on Queensland's colonial and state history (Queensland started as a colony in its own right in 1859 and became a state of Australia with Federation in 1901). On the site there are Government Gazettes, Pugh's Almanacs, history theses and books. This is a fantastic resource for Queensland research.