Design Exploration - Initial Exploration of Trove

Initial exploration for the project began with just going onto Trove and exploring the types of content that the database provided. I also signed up as a member of the site to gain full access to all the features that the website allowed. The one sentence that I had to structure my exploration was: generate ideas that make Trove data interesting.

Using Trove's Advanced Search yielded more ways to segment search results, including by publication and by year.

Although I spent some time looking through all of the sections of the Trove site, I thought that the content that was being returned from the Digitised newspapers section and the Pictures, photos, objects of the site where yielding the most interesting results. Searching within Pictures, photos, objects bought back content like posters, photographs and charts for example. 

With the digitised newspapers I was reminded of microform records of old newspapers. During my undergraduate degree I had often read comics from old newspapers as well as newspaper articles from WWI and WW2 when I had free time, and remember them being incredibly fascinating as a form of content. Going through the digitised newspaper content on Trove reminded me of browsing newspapers in this way.

 

Trove also had a separate website specially dedicated to coloured covers from the Australian Women's Weekly that I thought was an interesting way to present otherwise quite boring content. The interface provided the opportunity for users to search through the covers by topics like the Royal family, knitting patterns, fashion and pets.