The second meeting of the Greek Genealogy Hub kicked off on Tuesday evening at one of Coburg Library’s meeting rooms under the guidance of convener Kalliroe Tsiatis. There was an initial meeting in March but COVID lockdowns interfered with regular meetings after that.
The Greek Genealogy Hub meeting is a community-led program was making use of the City of Moreland’s efforts to encourage people to back to using its facilities.
Ms Tsiatis told Neos Kosmos that the hub which is held on the first Tuesday of each month drew interested parties who stayed on to talk long past their allotted time.
“We discussed how people can organise themselves in their family history search. How to organise their photographs into albums and to ‘digitise’ old pictures and even use photo-editing programs to bring old pictures to life,” said Ms Tsiatis, a retired primary school teacher who has spent the last 20 years compiling her family history in Asia Minor going back to the late 18th Century.
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“It was a very interesting night and we discussed other wide-ranging topics (relating to family history). You start with your family photographs, documents, diaries and letters. You can ask relatives about what they know and often the initial response is ‘we don’t know anything’, and then someone will come of with bags of old photos, letters diaries.”
One of the participants who was attending in her personal capacity was library technician (Multicultural Services) Ioanna (Jo) Vrahnas who said that one of the resources available to library-card holders was access through the to online genealogy site Ancestry.com through the library service website.
She said hub participants to shared their knowledge and resources in setting up their genealogies.
“One of the ladies on Tuesday night said she had a 1908 business directory for Constantinople that would be very interesting to look at,” said Ms Vrahnas.
♦The next meeting of Greek Genealogy Hub at Coburg Library is set for Tuesday, 3 August at 5pm. For more information contact Kalliroe Tsiatis on on 0410 020 500 or email: Kalliroe@tsiatis.com
