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Introduction
This chapter provides practical examples to assist educators in engaging students with memorials and monuments as a key resource to learn about a range of interrelated areas such as Humanities and Social Sciences and the Arts. Both areas help students to consider the social, cultural, environmental, economic and political contexts encompassed in memorials and monuments. As we have seen in the previous chapters, memorials and monuments often reflect the values of the society that constructed them. However, as communities become more diverse, memorials and monuments have changed to reflect multiple perspectives, valuing the interpretations viewers bring through designs that are more abstract and less didactic than traditional memorials. However, it is important that students learn how past events impact on the present and how contemporary memorials and monuments also draw from the past.
Practical guides and video support
The following section provides practical guides to help students learn about their local war memorial or monument, explore its history and undertake individual research on the names that are listed. The guides also support students in learning how to search public databases such as the Australian War Memorial records, the National Archives of Australia and Trove.
The practical guides and video support provide information about:
- Finding information about the local war memorial and using Trove
- Identifying a name on the local memorial or honour board
- Searching the Australian War Memorial records
- Finding service records at the National Archives of Australia
Practical guide 1: Finding information about the local war memorial and using Trove
What is Trove?
Trove is a collaboration between the National Library of Australia and hundreds of Australian partner organisations, including state, university and council libraries. Trove shows where physical content such as books and journals are held. You can also use it to search for and access digital content including newspapers, government gazettes and diaries. It is a useful resource for all who are interested in history.
How to search
- Go to Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/
- Enter your keywords into the search box at the top of the homepage (ensure your spelling is correct – Trove will search for whatever you type)
- Click the green magnifying glass button to the right of to the search box to begin your search
Searching a category
- Click the arrow buttons next to ‘All categories’ to see a drop-down list of available categories
- Choose a category such as ‘Newspapers & Gazettes’
Gazettes are a useful source of government information as they are an official publication created for the purpose of sharing the actions and decisions of the government. All Australian governments (Commonwealth, State and Territory) publish official gazettes. These gazettes are now published in digital format, but the early ones have been digitised and added to Trove.
- Enter the names of t