I was casually searching at Trove last night, as you do, and a “coming soon” result came up for the Koroit Sentinel & Tower Hill Advocate (1914-1918).  Very surprising as the paper is not on the 2012-13 list of titles coming.  Could this be one of the new titles for 2013-14?  If only the Hamilton Spectator would come up in a search result.   I did another search and there it was, almost glowing on the screen     ***”The Hamilton Spectator” (1914-1918)***.   Happy dance time.

Maybe I could find some more.  I searched “Byaduk” and checked the list of newspapers in the sidebar.  I found the Coleraine Albion & Western Advertiser (1914-1918) and the Penshurst Free Press (1914-1918).  More dancing.

Recently I read in The Warrnambool Standard (a modern day edition) that the Hamilton History Centre had received a Local History grant to digitise the Hamilton Spectator (1860-1878).  That was exciting but I didn’t expect to be reading articles from the Hamilton Spectator on the Trove site in the coming months.

The time period 1914-1918 is of particular interest to me as both James and Susan Harman died in 1916 and I’ve been holding out for a decent obituary for James.  The Spec was my last hope.  I had a false alarm when the Port Fairy Gazette came online, so I have my fingers crossed.  As I will be researching the Harmans more extensively in the next 12 months for my Diploma thesis, this may save some time at the Hamilton History Centre looking through microfilm for his obituary.

Of course I’ve already done a search and had results for each of my family names and I’ve sent requests to my Electronic Friend to email me when the articles are available.  I’m off now to check the other three papers. Think of all the obituaries I can find for Passing of the Pioneers.

If you would like to have a preliminary search too, click on the newspapers above and you will go to the full list of articles already digitised.  You can search from there and if successful,  request a notification when the articles are available.  Happy searching.