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Please note: These Local History Resources are only available to use in our libraries. 

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Discover your ancestors, start a family tree, browse electoral records, find out about your convict heritage and more. 
Search more than 11 billion records from all around the world in the Library edition.

This free library service is only accessible from public computers within our libraries and Our Library Wi-Fi connection.

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Search over 50 million records for Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands – millions of records that you won’t find available elsewhere online, including: cemetery and electoral records, military and religious documents as well as police and government gazette. 

This free library service is only accessible from public computers within our libraries and Our Library Wi-Fi connection.

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The Ryerson Index is a free index to death notices appearing in Australian newspapers. The date range covered extends from the Sydney Gazette of 1803 up to newspapers published within the last week or so. The Index also includes many funeral notices, and some probate notices and obituaries. 

Because the Index was originally created by the Sydney Dead Persons Society, its strength lies in notices from NSW papers - including in excess of two million notices from theSydney Morning Heraldalone. However, the representation from sources in other states continues to grow, with additional papers and funeral directors being regularly added, so that the Index can now truly be considered an Australian index.

How to use:

• On the homepage, click on the Search Ryerson button.
• In the search boxes, type in the surname and the first name of the deceased person and click search.

This gives you a list of notices of people of that name. Even if a person has a common name, it’s not usually difficult to find the right person.

Ryerson lists the name, date of death or funeral, age of the deceased, place of death, title of the newspaper holding the death notice and the date of publication. Usually, it includes the middle name of the person.

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