my place

What can you tell me about my house?

Many people arrive at the State Library of Victoria, either in-person or online, wanting to find out about a place – their home, their street, their town. The Library holds lots of material about Victorian places, but it's not always easy to find. You can search by name, but not by distance.

This is an experiment in exploring the Library's collections by name and distance. To make this possible, I've extracted and processed large amounts of data from resources such as:

• Sands & MacDougall's directories
• Committee for Urban Action collection
• parish maps
• Victorian newpapers

In addition, Victorian map lovers have been helping me georeference digitised maps from the Library's collection. You can check the project dashboard for details.

Just enter a street address, street name, or place name to get started. For example:

• my parents built their first house at 96 Cromer Rd, Beaumaris
• in the 1980s, some friends used to live in Best Street, Fitzroy North
• I was born in Geelong

All the code and more documentation will be available soon!