One of Ballarat's leading historians, Federation University's Clare Gervasoni, says there is no doubt the region's museums and historical societies love their collections, they sometimes just need help sharing them.

For her work in doing just that and much more, Ms Gervasoni has won a prestigious award from the Australian Museums and Galleries Association Victoria (AMaGA Victoria).

The Martin Hallett Award for individual contributions to community heritage recognises Ms Gervasoni's work in enabling preservation and digitisation skills in museum and gallery volunteers and instigating cataloguing and best practice through use of the Victorian Collections historical digital archive, including working with Federation University library to catalogue their collection on the system and working for Ballarat Heritage Services.

"Clare is a longstanding and leading user of Victorian Collections since it began in 2010. A leader in her region, she has has been a clear and vocal advocate for small and regional community organisations that use Victorian Collections," AMaGA Victoria said of her award.

"Clare is the consummate champion of preserving and making accessible grass roots community collections using Victorian Collections".

Ms Gervasoni says winning an award named in honour of someone she admired mean a great deal.

"As a public servant, he saw the regional collections going into decay. There were not enough volunteers to do the work and not enough money to have good programs to document the collection. He had research done - I did some of that research - from that he was able to go to government and put forward a case for the Collections Victoria website we know today."

Collections Victoria is a brilliant tool for everyone in the community access history and to save digital versions of items, Ms Gervasoni says.

"A lot of ideas came out of the (2009) bushfires, when places like Marysville lost their whole collection. Now you can have a great conservation copy sitting on the server at Melbourne Museum; if disaster strikes, you've at least got a copy. Also, you've got the documentation, you know what you've got, you know where it's located, who gave it to you, the stories about it."