Heritage et AL

To mark  Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori , Māori Language Week, for 2015 here at Heritage et AL we are featuring some of the oldest items in our collections relating to te reo Māori. These taonga are all held in Sir George Grey Special Collections and currently on show in our exhibition space on the second floor of the Central Library as part of our exhibition   Pūtahitanga: a meeting of two worlds in the North, 1769-1842 . The arrival of Captain James Cook in New Zealand in 1769 is usually seen as the beginning of the meeting of two worlds – the Māori and the European – leading to increasing interaction, misunderstanding and understanding, cross-cultural movement and exchange. This exhibition reveals some of those interactions with explorers, sealers and whalers, missionaries, traders and settlers in the documents and books produced at the time and held in Sir George Grey Special Collections. The word Pūtahitanga means a confluence of streams and expresses the fluidity ...

Pasifika at Auckland Libraries is well underway and there is lots you can take part in . To get you in the mood, listen to the Pacific Islands music playlist  that has been specially created for this festival. You can also check out the  Pacific resources  at Auckland Libraries. This includes a range of heritage collections: online resources, Pacific Island family history resources (Central Auckland Research Centre), Pacific newspapers (South Auckland Research Centre) and reference materials at the research centres . There are also significant collections in the Sir George Grey Special Collections, including a tapa cloth book collected during Cooks' three voyages to the southern hemisphere. This has now been digitised and can be accessed online and you can read about the project to track down the other Cook tapa cloth books known to exist. To further celebrate and honour the contribution that Pacific Islands communities make to the cultural mix of peoples...

When the the Ocean liner Queen Mary 2 docked at Auckland Harbour on Monday 11 March, on board was a VIP in the form of Captain Cook's draft journal. Letters by Cook detailing the first voyage and his personal tea caddy and spoon were also on board the ship. The brief return of this journal marks the first time it has been in the country since it was written by Cook. Complete with scribblings and crossing outs, the handwritten account describes Cook's first circumnavigation of New Zealand during 1769-1770 and the infamous encounter with Māori at Poverty Bay. Captain James Cook was the first European to explore and map the coastline of New Zealand extensively. On each of his three voyages to the Pacific he was accompanied by artists and scientists. Accounts of each voyage were published both by Cook and others on the expeditions. Ref: 4-1347, Captain Cook, Sir George Grey Special Collections

Dr. Donald Kerr, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Otago has taken on the task of tracking down all known copies of the tapa cloth books from Captain Cook's three voyages. Some of you may remember the post on 1 June 2012, which discussed this book and the specimen in the Sir George Grey Special Collections at Central City Library. The full title of the book is as follows: 'A catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook, to the Southern Hemisphere: with a particular account of the manner of the manufacturing the same in various Islands of the South Seas; partly extracted from Mr. Anderson and Reinhold Forster's observations, and the verbal account of some of the most knowing of the navigators: with some anecdotes that happened to them among the natives'. London: Arranged and printed for Alexander Shaw, 1787.   Ref: 7-C1922, Sir George Grey Special Collections