Gisborne Herald: Opening up the collection. “Only about 1 percent of Tairawhiti Museum’s collection can be exhibited in the museum at any one time but digital technology means the entire collection can be curated online….Due to be launched tomorrow, the museum’s collection website is a work in progress. The museum has more than 40,000 items catalogued in its internal collection database and these will gradually be added to the online database.”
RNZ: Ngā Taonga restructures to disestablish 29 roles. “A major restructure at the national film and sound archive is being met with fears that access to New Zealand’s past will be irreversibly lost. Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision is set to disestablish 29 roles next month, replacing them with as many new roles that aim to improve public access to the historic visual and radio content. But those who spent years working in the archive’s collection say that won’t be the case.”
National Library of New Zealand: Papers Past data has been set free . “Papers Past is the National Library’s fully text searchable website containing over 150 newspapers from New Zealand and the Pacific, as well as magazines, journals and government reports. As a result of the data being released, people can now access the data from 78 New Zealand newspapers from the Albertland Gazette to the Victoria Times, all published before 1900. The data itself consists of the METS/ALTO XML files for each issue. The XML files sit in the back of Papers Past and are what allows you to locate keywords within articles.”
National Library of New Zealand: Introducing the Library Loudhailer . “The first podcast off the rank will be a conversation with Paul Diamond, one of the curators of the Pūkana exhibition (Te Ihi, Te Wehi, Te Wana – Moments in Māori performance) currently on show at the National Library in Wellington until the 30th of July 2020. We talk about developing the exhibition, what Paul learnt about the exhibition process and the joy of working in a team. Among Paul’s whirlwind description of the exhibition, he elaborates on the intricacies and purpose of the traditional Māori carved karetao (wooden puppets), delves into the power of haka, looks at the photography of Māori school pupils by Ans Westra, and grapples with the explosion that is the te reo singing heavy metal band Alien Weaponry.”
Scoop New Zealand: Canterbury Earthquake Resources Find A Permanent Home. “Lessons learned from the Canterbury earthquakes will be shared widely and preserved for the future when a collection of reports and information moves to a new digital home. The Government’s Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Learning and Legacy Programme – which collected over 200 online items – is being transferred to the University of Canterbury’s CEISMIC – Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive.”
National Library of New Zealand: Six million pages and counting. “As of today, Papers Past now holds more than 6 million pages of newspapers! We’ve reached this important milestone thanks to the addition of four completely new titles and some additional, early issues of the Wanganui Chronicle (its coverage now extends all the way back to 1860). The other four titles are the Gisborne Times (1901-1937), Hokitika Guardian (1917-1940), Opotiki News (1938-1950) and the Saturday Advertiser (July 1875-1878).”
Air Force Museum of New Zealand: Air Force Museum Photo Archives Go Online. “Although at this stage only approximately 5,000 images are available, an estimated 0.5% of the total collection, more are coming online every day. Usually these are photos that researchers have requested and because there’s only me working in the Photo Archive, generally these are all I have time to digitise and make available. As time permits, I’ll be working through many thousands of files which simply need only a small amount of work before they can be made available. The initial focus will be on named course groups, starting with wartime pilots’ courses and aircraft pictures.”
Radio New Zealand: Online resource journeys through hidden history of Waipā. “Te Ara Wai Journeys is a self-guided tour of New Zealand Land Wars battle sites, landscapes and early settlements around the district. The website was launched on Friday by the Waipā District Council.” If you’d like an overview of the New Zealand Land Wars, check out This page from Christchurch City Council Libraries.
National Library of New Zealand: Is your Facebook account an archive of the future?. “Over the next few months, we’re inviting New Zealanders to donate their Facebook archives to the Alexander Turnbull Library. In collecting personal Facebook archives of New Zealanders here and abroad, we will be continuing the work that has always been part of our mission: documenting the lives of New Zealanders today to support the emerging and anticipated research needs of the future.”
National Library of New Zealand: Black sheep in the family?. “What do Agnes Vallance, Agnes Skervington, Amy Laing, Amy Bennett, Amy Cameron, Amy Shannon, Amy Chanel, and Percy Redwood all have in common? Well, they are all aliases used by confidence trickster and male impersonator Amy Bock as she romped her way through New Zealand, defrauding her employees and, most notoriously, marrying a young woman in South Otago. You can now trace Amy’s career in and out of prison by searching the New Zealand Police Gazette (1877-1945). We have just made this title, along with the Canterbury Police Gazette (1863-1877) and the Otago Police Gazette (1861-1877) available and fully text searchable on Papers Past.”
Stuff NZ: Secrets of Aoraki/Mt Cook to go on digital display. “Forgotten photos, artefacts of exploration and personal histories which have been protected in a back room in Aoraki/Mt Cook are finally going on display to the world thanks to an extensive digitisation project by the Aoraki Mount Cook Museum Trust.” Aoraki/Mt Cook is a national park in New Zealand. You can learn more about it here.
National Library of New Zealand: Looking for Old Friends?. “Old Friends (www.oldfriends.co.nz) was a popular social networking website owned by Trade Me. Its purpose was to help people locate former school friends and workmates. Members who signed up to Old Friends could upload photos, post comments, contact each other and compile information for reunions. The site was launched in 2002 and finally closed in 2016. When Trade Me announced that they would be taking the site down, the National Library quickly got in touch to see if we could work together to harvest a copy of Old Friends for the Library’s collections.”
