Here are some web sites of interest to historians and genealogists.

www.ryde.nsw.gov.au/ryde/history.htm The City of Ryde’s History site contains a brief history of Ryde, including the history of the original aboriginal inhabitants of the area. There is also access to Ryde Library’s photographic collection and the photographic collection of the Hunters Hill Historical Society.

www.rahs.org.au  The Royal Australian Historical Society. This web site contains a lot of useful information, including links to associated organizations and all its affiliated historical societies.

www.sl.nsw.gov.au/navigators/convicts/index.html This is a new online guide by the State Library of NSW to help find your convict ancestors. It lists all their convict databases, both online and those in the library, and links to other related sites. It even has court records of The Old Bailey and other UK courts.

www.ancestry-australia.com.au An extensive website that gives links to Australian databases that can be searched for free.

www.ancestry.com.au  An online data base that includes Australian convict registers, Australian and UK registers, Sands Directories and other genealogy information.
In July 2010 they added an online index of 14.9 million Australian birth, marriage and death records:
            Australian Birth Index    1788 - 1922
            Australian Marriage Index  1788 - 1957
           Australian Death Index    1788 - 1985

www.findmypast.co.uk  Find My Past (previously called 1837online) purchased the UK National Archives. They then had more than 650 million records accessible online.
 In July 2010 they announced the completion of a 2 year project fully indexing the complete  1837 - 2006 UK birth records (a quarter of a billion names).

www.ww2roll.gov.au  World War Two Nominal Roll. This contains information from the service records of the men and women who served in Australia’s defence forces and the Merchant Navy during World War Two.

www.twgpp.org The War Graves Photographic Project, an ongoing project photographing all the headstones of Australian war graves. The database is indexed and the images may be viewed online and purchased

www.naa.gov.au  National Archives of Australia web site. In addition to its usual wealth of information, since April 2007 it has had the World War One service records online.

www.nla.gov.au  The National Library of Australia website. This contains a wealth of information.
Its Australian Newspapers Digitisation Project is now online at www.nla.gov.au/ndp This is an ongoing project to digitise all Australian newspapers from 1803 onwards. 1,000,000 pages with
10,000,000 articles may now be read online at http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au. and more pages are being added each week. There is a search facility where you can search for articles containing people’s names, places etc.

www.dictionaryofsydney.org The Dictionary of Sydney, a very comprehensive online dictionary of all aspects of Sydney’s history, went online on 4 November 2009.It contains numerous entries about Ryde, including North Ryde, West Ryde, East Ryde, Meadobank, Tennyson, Denistone East and Marsfield.

www.coraweb.com.au Web Sites for Genealogists - An Australian gateway for tracing your family tree. This website by genealogist Cora Num has 1650+ quality links arranged in 48 categories.

http://historicrydesociety.com This is the website of the newly formed Historic Ryde Society in Ryde on the Isle of Wight in the United Kingdom. It gives an interesting insight into the history of our namesake.

Since September 2009, Genealogist Heather Garnsey has had a regular page, Genealogy know-how, in the monthly computer magazine PC User. She discusses new and updated genealogy websites and how to get the most from them. (Current and past issues of PC User magazine are in Ryde Library).