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50 years of Polyfest

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2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Polyfest, celebrating five incredible decades of diverse communities sharing their cultures through dance, singing, and oratory. With Tāmaki Makaurau as the home to a vibrant Pasifika community, it remains the perfect location to host this annual festival. From its humble beginnings with four schools and their students, Polyfest festival now attracts over 100,000 visitors and brings together more than 70 schools to celebrate Moana Oceania cultures and more. The festival proudly showcases traditional music, dance, costumes, and languages, but it is the camaraderie, cultural enlightenment, and vibrant celebration of youth that truly stand out. Image: Hillary College Yearbook 1976. Auckland Libraries Research South In recent years, the festival has faced several challenges that have also impacted Aotearoa as a whole. In 2019, the nation mourned the tragic events in Christchurch, leading to the cancellation of the festival’s final day. The following year,...
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The Legacy of Mike Hinge

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Last month, our Heritage Collections exhibition, Other Worlds , launched on Level 2 of Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero | Central City Library. A huge amount of work went into planning, preparing, and displaying all the material on show, down to the smallest detail. The curators, Andrew Henry and Renee Orr, did a fantastic job, as did everyone else involved in bringing it together.  This blog post is inspired by a unique connection made in the process of planning Other Worlds, wherein I was tasked with researching the copyright status of some book covers that were selected to be reproduced as posters for the exhibition. Twelve covers were chosen, and one of those covers was this one below. You may recognise it as the main promotional image for our exhibition. It’s the first image visitors see upon walking into the exhibition, serving as a sort of beacon – the bright pinks and oranges catch the eye almost immediately.  Image : Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact , vol. XCVI, no. 4. New Yo...
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The Voice of Suburban Auckland: The legacy of Noel Roseman and his newspapers

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There was a time not long ago when nearly every substantial community in Auckland hosted its own weekly newspaper. Most of these emerged in the aftermath of World War II, when returning soldiers moved into new homes in the suburbs. They quickly began commercial ventures and became involved in local politics. By 1960, there were around 30 community newspapers in the area that would become Auckland catering to a population of about 500,000. A few suburbs even supported multiple papers that catered to specific interest groups. Auckland Council Libraries and its predecessors have done their best to collect as many of these newspapers as possible and through this effort, stories have emerged from the golden age of community newspapers. Photo: Portrait of Noel E Roseman from the front page of the Ribbon News-Pictorial, 14 May 1968. Noel Eric Roseman of Grey Lynn was an unremarkable man when he printed his first newspaper in 1949. During the war, he had served in the Royal New Zealand Air For...
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Other Worlds: Podcast

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  Image: Cover illustration by Mike Hinge from Analog science fiction, science fact, April 1976. Explore the imaginative worlds of science fiction in this vibrant exhibition featuring books, magazines, comics and posters from Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. Science fiction allows readers and writers to imagine other worlds, whether they’re mind-bending, hopeful or downright terrifying.  Learn about the big ideas and publishing history of this expansive genre and immerse yourself in its incredible settings and eye-popping artwork. Trace themes and tropes from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and discover the close connections between science fact and speculative fiction. Enjoy seeing early editions of your favourite works and be inspired to find your next read. The exhibition is open Monday - Saturday from February 19th - August 2nd, 2025, at Central City Library.  In this blog, you can listen to in-depth discussions with the curators w...
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Ancestry launches 1921 Census for England and Wales

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Auckland Council Libraries provides free access to a variety of online family history resources, including genealogy websites such as Ancestry, Findmypast, The Genealogist and MyHeritage. Recently, Ancestry launched the 1921 Census for England and Wales   (this includes the Isle of Mann and the Channel Islands). This census is a significant resource for us family history librarians and fellow researchers. The modern census was taken every 10 years from 1841 onwards, and grouped families together, provided names, addresses and other useful genealogical information. The later census records are particularly valuable as they progressively asked more questions that are relevant to family historians. These records are subject to the 100-year privacy laws and are only released one hundred years after the census was taken. Findmypast originally won the tender for the 1921 Census , first publishing it on their website in 2022, after they had completed conservation/preservation work on the...
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