Tuesday, 20 May 2014

TROVE TUESDAY


For some time now I have been participating in a project for my local library correcting the OCR text for historic issues of the local newspaper which has been scanned into the Trove database.

I have been assigned 1927 and have just finished correcting the issue for 18 March 1927 of the Frankston & Somerville Standard. Occasionally you find something that just tickles the funny bone, like when the scanning software reads Frankston as Prankston - that's a bit of a favourite. Perhaps Frankston could have some sort of practical joke festival!

The other thing you notice is the way the meanings of words have changed over time, for example the word "gay". When I was growing up gay meant bright and happy - now you couldn't use the word in that context at all. So imagine my surprise when I saw the following headline in the paper,
When Our Town Goes Gay
in relation to the Traders' Picnic. And then they also used the word further down the article when describing the crowd.

Here is a link to the article which describes in detail, the day of the Traders' Picnic.

 http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/74990842

Happy reading.



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