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Awekura - Te Tiriti ki Tāmaki Makaurau

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Awekura is a blog and podcast series that highlights treasures within Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. In this series, library specialists provide a window into the world of these special collections. What happens when we bring 21st century technology to the heritage collections? The Mātauranga Māori team at Auckland Libraries has explored this question through an augmented reality (AR) experience focused on Te Tiriti ki Tāmaki Makaurau | Places where the treaty was signed in Auckland . We are familiar with the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi on 6 February 1840. What people are less aware of, is how the treaty was then taken around the Bay of Islands and Hokianga before being sent around the motu for additional signatures, including Tāmaki Makaurau. Before becoming an augmented reality (AR) experience, the project began as a print booklet which drew on research and heritage collection items to explore the story of the signing of the Te Tiriti in Tāmaki Makaurau. In Auckland, we...
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Newspapers mapped out

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Note: The following article discusses Auckland regional newspapers family trees (LHE-062) , a new resource available on Kura Heritage Collections Online. Have you ever wondered: what are the relationships between all these Auckland newspapers? It was an unexpected question I asked myself about a year ago when I found myself utterly baffled by the shelves full of a dozen different Courier newspaper titles in the stack at Manukau Library. In January 2024, all I knew were that there were four Courier newspapers circulating in East and South Auckland: the Manukau Courier , Eastern Courier , East & Bays Courier , and Papakura Courier . Not for a moment did I consider that a complex web of editorial decisions over fifty years had led to these four newspapers existing at this single point in time. Indeed, at one point in the past there was only one Courier —the South Auckland Courier —and at a later point there were six! Thus began my quest to make sense of the Auckland’s hundreds o...
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Five hundred years of books, a collector and a library

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Image:  The Don Smith Symposium panel – Mark Houlahan, Jack Ross and Shef Rogers (seated) with panel chair Sophie Tomlinson. Emeritus Professor Don Smith (1934-2023) and his wife Jill first visited the library in 2018 to assess the Heritage Collections holdings and the synergy of the early modern titles in Don’s working library. Don had taught English literature at the University of Auckland and was seeking a suitable research library in Auckland for the substantial library he had built during his career in the United Kingdom, North America and New Zealand.  Don was born and educated in Auckland, at Auckland Grammar School and the University of Auckland, before his post-graduate study at Merton College Oxford. His doctoral thesis ‘ An edition of The rehearsal transpos’d by Andrew Marvell, with introduction and commentary ’ (1963) is now represented in the Heritage Collections as a monograph published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford (1971) alongside his early pre-1801 editions ...
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Summer reads 2025: Recommendations from Auckland Central City Library

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  Image: Reading in bed at Alton Ave. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1207-0455. Photographer: Ronald Clark. Summer is upon us and are librarians are delighted to share what pukapuka moved them this year. Fellow research librarian Rin has asked the Central City Librarians and Research Librarians what pukapuka blew them away in 2025. The list suggested below have a local and global connection to Aotearoa. Most importantly, they are all available at Auckland Libraries for all of us to read.  E maru ina tau! Here are our offerings: Image: Cyclists reading at Aotea Square. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 273-PAG047-07. Photographer: Stuart Page. Tony Fomison: Life of the Artist by Mark Forman A lovingly produced, long overdue biography of painter Tony Fomison. A pity it lacks reproductions of his paintings, with their doom chord atmospheres - check out the holy, deep tomb rumblings of 'Study of Holbein's 'Dead Christ' at the Auckland Art Gallery - but is sti...
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A brief history of empty spaces

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I have often wandered past a couple of prominent empty lots, one between Shortland and Fort Streets and the other bounded by Albert, Victoria and Elliot Streets in the CBD and wondered how it was that there could be car parks in what must be some of the more sought-after plots of land in Tāmaki. Other than the occasional night market pre-pandemic, what has been going on with these open-air car parks?  Turns out I’m not the only one - this has crossed other’s minds too and is a popular question. A quick Google turned a heap of results, and it looks like these are the most heavily reported on carparks in the country. A colleague had similar thoughts a few years back and wrote about the Albert Street site of the Royal International Hotel.  Image:  Artist's impression of the new Royal International Hotel on the corner of Elliott Street and Victoria Street West, 1960s, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1580-24. Artist unknown. Image:  Auckland Star building, Shor...
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