Contemporary Pacific Collecting

Kia ora, Talofa lava, Kia Orana, Malo e lelei, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Bula vinaka, Namaste, Malo ni, Halo ola keta, Mauri, Fakatalofa atu and warm Pacific greetings.

As many previous posts in this blog and our History Pin site have shown Auckland Libraries is very active documenting Pacific history.


A key role in documenting history is contemporary collecting. We have an active and targeted collecting program around Pacific events like the Pacifica Living Arts Festival. If you attended you would have seen our librarians walking around, taking photographs and talking to people. This content then gets added to Local History Online, which is a combined collection of local history indexes to images, community newspapers and oral histories. We are in the process of adding audio visual content as well as images, which we’re really excited about.


Te Kauroa – Future Directions is the long-term plan for Auckland Libraries and a key focus for us in the Heritage and Research team is that Auckland’s unique stories will be shared and celebrated. We will have a particular focus on Pacific communities to ensure that their stories are collected and preserved now and for future generations.


Last March we wrote about our Footprints database and how it can be browsed by themes like, ‘Pasifika’ and ‘Cultural Diversity’. This is a great place to look for Pacific related images from around South Auckland. These are a few examples from there: 




If you have a collection of photographs or the like and think you may have something to add to the region’s memory, come in to your local research centre and have a chat.

Author: Andrew Henry

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