The Sydney

Dead Persons Society  

 

Meetings Details

DPS meetings are held every month.

On the second Saturday of each odd-numbered month the meeting is at Richmond Villa, 120 Kent St, Sydney from 1.30pm to 3.30pm. Access via public transport is good (Wynyard Railway Station is less than a 10-minute walk, or Millers Point buses 5 minutes) but car parking is both expensive and inconvenient, mostly with a 2-hour limit. Cost is $8 for SAG members, $12 for others, payable at the door to SAG.

On the second Saturday of each even-numbered month the meeting is held at Leumeah House, part of the Anglican Retirement Village on the corner of Old Northern and Castle Hill Roads, Castle Hill. These meetings run from 1.00pm to 4.00pm and there is no charge.

The format of meetings is usually along the lines of a news session, then a presentation on a particular topic, followed by a chat over a cup of tea. After tea we generally have an open questions and answers session in which all participate.

In general the topic covered at Richmond Villa one month will be repeated at Castle Hill the next month. The schedule for 2008 meetings is:.

 

The Sydney DPS Mailing List

The DPS operates a mailing list using the ROOTSWEB umbrella. It enables many more people to participate in DPS discussions than just those who live locally and are able to attend meetings.

To subscribe, send a message to DPS-SYDNEY-request@rootsweb.com with the word "subscribe" without the quotes in the subject and the body of the email with no additional text.

To post a message to the DPS mailing list: Click Here. (Note: Rootsweb requires you to be a subscriber to post to any of their lists, including this one.)  

Objectives of the DPS

The aims of the Sydney Dead Persons Society include the following admirable objectives:-

• to be a support group for those who use computers and the Internet in their genealogical research;
• to provide a forum for users of the internet to meet and learn from others;
• to demonstrate in "hands on" mode how modern technology can assist in family history research and documentation;
• to assist members to harness the features of computers, hardware and software for the purposes of genealogical pursuit;
• to promote the production and distribution of genealogy indexes and other research tools;
• to foster co-operation and personal development through genealogy, history and family research; and
• fun and friendship.

The Dead Persons Society in Sydney is an informal self-help group of amateur family historians and genealogists who use (or are thinking of using ) the Internet. The members are engaged in swapping indexes and genealogical resources and learning how to access and retrieve genealogical information by computer through the internet.

There is nothing "dead" about this group - we are pioneering, at the leading edge of technology, methods of deploying, and improving the average quality of, genealogical research and data. This is all about knowledge identification, deployment, classification and retrieval - by home computer and modem. By being up to date with, if not in front of, the technology currently being used by historians, archivists and librarians, we are part of the process of making genealogy a more respectable science in the eyes of the professionals, public servants, purists and academics - all of whom of course provide us with tremendous support and facilities.

The general consensus seems to be that the Sydney Dead Persons Society's main objective should be "to give support in the Sydney and nearby areas, to genealogists using computers and especially those wanting to access electronically readable data via the Internet and CD-ROMs."

The feeling is that the Sydney DPS should remain loose and informal, with no membership fees, council, board or bureaucracy. This is after all, supposed to be fun !

In addition, the following members have established their own home pages on the web (generally, but not exclusively, genealogically-related), and you are encouraged to visit.

1.  John Graham
2.  Peita Lafsky
3.  Fred Scott
4.  Lindsay Swadling

History of the DPS

The objective here is to describe the objectives and activities of the Dead Persons Society and how it is assisting amateur family historians to link computers through the telephone networks of the world for the purposes of genealogical research.

Even after one has mastered the art ( rather than science ) of navigating through the intricacies of telecommunications protocols, modems, file compression and offline readers, there is still the challenge of identifying file areas to access, conferences to join and the etiquette of participating in the message exchange processes. Out there, there is a cyberspace of faceless enthusiasts; every night, as you power up your computer, it's like getting ready for like a blind date. So I am told !

So it was that Leone Fabre, an enthusiastic family historian in Victoria came to the conclusion in 1992, that it might be a good idea to meet some of those faceless people with whom she had been communicating on the Heritage Oz Bulletin Board in Melbourne. Accordingly, Leone invited her ethereal correspondents to her home for an informal gathering, to exchange ideas, meet each other "in the flesh", pass on tips about the availability of computerised indexes and how to retrieve them, and perhaps equally importantly, to build on their friendship and common interests so that they could all benefit and enjoy their hobby.

This became a regular meeting at Leone's home and eventually I understand she may have run out of cups and saucers and in addition the guests became so engrossed that darkness had fallen before they were willing to go home. Now, the group meets in a community hall in Melbourne. Other groups have sprung up across Australia, from Perth to Brisbane, Tasmania ( yes, North and South ), to Townsville, from Auckland and Wellington and the Gold Coast, Canberra, the Newcastle area, Adelaide and now Sydney. Get on the tram !

The inaugural meeting of the Dead Persons Society was convened by John Snelson (then a Member of the Council of the Society of Australian Genealogists) and Phil Young (operator of the Custom Built BBS, later Ancestors Online), and held in Sydney on Saturday 27 August 1994 at Rumsey Hall, 24 Kent Street, Sydney. We met there until January 2007 when we moved to Richmond Villa following the sale of Rumsey Hall.

Some Useful Links

 

Some Useful Downloads

The following documents are available for download:

 

Thank you for visiting these pages ... We hope you have enjoyed your trip. We are always interested in knowing what far away place you are calling from, and in receiving any suggestions, additions, deletions or amendments to improve what is presented here.

To post a message to the DPS mailing list, refer to the DPS Mailing List section above. Remember, you must subscribe first.

To contact the DPS convenor: Click Here.

This page is maintained by the Sydney DPS convenor.