Heritage et AL

During the process of researching the dancing life of New Zealander Jan Caryll, I have discovered valuable insights into the history of New Zealand dance, significantly, teaching methods that link practices here to late nineteenth century European ballet. While accounts of local dance recitals in New Zealand from the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including programmes and newspaper articles, mention the numerous dances performed by children, usually stating the name of an item and its performers, a lesser known element in these accounts are the styles and techniques of those dances. It has been assumed that dance in New Zealand in this era consisted of frivolous, somewhat exuberant displays of ‘fancy dancing’. While it is true that ‘fancy dancing’, a style enveloping a myriad of steps that propelled a dancer across, up and down the stage or studio, formed a component of dance classes and performances, my research has unearthed hidden evidence of strict and historically ...

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...

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...

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 ...