Creating a digital archive of the 1904-1956 birth registers from Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital
In November last we started our Johannesburg Branch project which is the digitisation of the Registration of births of the Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital in earnest and with enthusiasm. This followed discussions with CMI authorities resulting happily, in a small group of volunteers being permitted to take digital copies of records in the newly established archive.
Faced with a small room, packed to the rafters, it seemed, with many aged scrapbooks in varying stages of decaymeasuring at least 60cm square and dating 
back to when the hospital was founded. The Ward registers date back to the 30's with a few ledgers dating back to the early 1920's.
Desré Sjoberg and Glynis Steer hit the ground running by starting with the first Volume of the registers dated 1904 (photo above) whilst Jo Ohlson de Fine, and I amalgamated the Ward, Admission and Maternity registers into chronological order and Andrea Band made a list of all the dates for each section and filed them in numerical and then chronological order. The newer registers start from 1978.
We all get on very well, the common denominator being a love of reading, history, research, and even crafting and whenever we finished a section, we helped in another.
A tea-break at eleven o'clock brings talk of genealogical finds, family discoveries and aha! moments as someone mentions something which suddenly just clicks, and you can't wait to get home and use the method on one of your own searches.
Meet the rest of the team: Jo, Andrea, Glynis and Desré
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| Jo | Andrea | Glynis | Desre |
It is going to be a lengthy process, but we are making good headway. We meet twice a week when an incredible amount of clicking goes on.
S
ince our very first visit, we have typed up an official accessions list;made a few fascinating discoveries, the first of which was a number of boxes of Government Gazettes which are in fantastic condition. The second discovery was a number of very exciting Nurses registers and journals which date back to 1916.
Our exciting February 2022 update is that we have now indexed over 2700 images dating from 1904 to 1917 thus proving that team work is dreamwork.