'It's not an easy thing to do': Research project a real page turner

For the past 27 years, Ms Reed has been going through the pages of The Standard's early newspapers and recording "anything interesting" that she notices as part of the Warrnambool Family History Group project.

For 93-year-old Mr Best, who has been helping with the project for more than 20 years, it meant learning how to use a computer for the first time when he was in his 70s.

Ms Reed was usually allocated papers from the months of July and October which she said meant she knew a lot about the region's football history and who made a tilt for office in the council elections of days gone by.

Mr Best is across events, births, deaths, marriages and accidents that have happened during January and June in Warrnambool from 130 years ago up until the early 1900s.

"There's always accidents with horses and guns, drownings," he said.

While recording what he finds in the papers for the family history group, Mr Best actually stumbled across the death notices for his great grandparents one day.

In fact, it was Mr Best's quest to research his own family history that led him to the family history group more than two decades ago.

"I discovered history when I was about 70 and started on the family tree," he said.

"I didn't have a clue really. I came here and received a lot of help."

And when he discovered they needed volunteers to go through the old copies of The Standard month by month and record what was in there, he put his hand up.

While only really expected to record names and information for the family history group, Ms Reed and Mr Best both said they ended up reading the whole articles.

"We just do it because it's interesting," Ms Reed said.

The pair are given copies of the old newspapers which have been put onto a USB using old microfilm. They then read through pages on their computers.

When it came to how many hours they had each spent going through the papers and collating data, they said there were probably too many to count. "Of course I'm only a two finger typist," Mr Best said.

And while the pair has helped record what has been in the papers up until the early 1900s, they are now doubling back to redo some months earlier years in the 1800s.

Ms Reed and Mr Best have both been presented with awards for their work with the family history group - something the pair said they had never expected.

Family history group president David Turland said the data the pair collected was turned into a research tool - a project that has been under way since 1990. "It's a big job," he said.

"It's a heck of an effort. It's not an easy thing to do."