SINCE 2009, Trove has been making recorded history easier to find online.

Volunteers have been accurately transcribing text from scanned historical newspapers, magazines, books and journals that can then be searched by the Trove search engine.

Trove contains 35,000 fully digitised books and approximately 51,000 magazines and journals.

Dr Marie–Louise Ayres is the director–general of the National Library of Australia which hosts Trove.

"Trove has made it easier for all Australians to learn more about our history, our families and our towns," Dr Ayres said.

When the documents are scanned into Trove, a computer attempts to accurately transcribe the text of the document.

Often the scanned text is faded so the computer has made its best guess at what the document said, which can be inaccurate.

This is where volunteers come in; they go through the computer's transcriptions and correct them.

In May 2019 the Wangaratta library started a group to help transcribe 200 Victorian community newspapers published between 1914 to 1918, including the Wangaratta Chronicle.

Library coordinator, Loueen Twyford said team meeting aspects of that group were interrupted by COVID.

Jenny, one of the local volunteers, helped at the initial meeting to teach people about using Trove.

She had already been volunteering for a couple of years and still does.

She especially enjoys fixing up the transcriptions of articles about Whorouly.

"Lots of articles involve family members," she said.

"Because I am familiar with names of locals it helps me understand the items.

"I also enjoyed looking up my father who grew up in Bacchus Marsh.

"I found lots of reports of his activities from the school he attended.

"I volunteer because I like editing, when I see an error I jump in and fix it.

"Volunteering for Trove is for people who are curious and like the idea of editing.

"If you don't have a computer or internet at home, you can do it at the local library."

She said the instructions of how to edit on Trove are simple to follow.

Trove currently has over five million images of magazines, newsletters and books available for volunteers to transcribe.

If you are interesting in helping to whittle down that number, dive into Trove at https://trove.nla.gov.au.