Heritage et AL

The New Zealand Herald  is now available from 1863 up to 1945 on Papers Past ! This is the culmination of a collaborative project  between Auckland Libraries , the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga O Aotearoa and APN (the publishers of the New Zealand Herald ) to fully digitise 82 years of the New Zealand Herald from 1863-1945. Prior to this latest release, content for this newspaper was available up to 1924. Ref: excerpt from New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23680, 12 June 1940, page 12 All of this wonderful content is now available and fully searchable through Papers Past , an online newspaper database run by the National Library. Papers Past contains more than 3 million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals from between 1839 and 1945, including 83 separate newspaper titles. For the Auckland region, Papers Past now includes the archived issues of eight newspaper titles. The essential morning and evening papers...

The latest blog post from Walter Cook at the advent of his retirement from The National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga O Aotearoa is a fascinating read. He divulges the 'tricks of the trade' used to date photographs. I was so interested in this idea, that I decided to test out his 'taxonomy of fashion', which is based on women's fashion and hairstyle trends of the day. I used these dated headings as a framework to search for complementary photos in the Sir George Grey Special Collections, using the Auckland Libraries Heritage Images database. You can see from what I found below, that it was quite a success! In a few cases where we don't know the exact date the photograph was taken, the taxonomy can be used as another tool in helping us to pin this down the date to a narrower time period. So enjoy and thanks to the National Library for the inspiration and what turned out to be a very fun exercise! The full crinoline, 1856 to 1865. Characterised...

In recent years, the rapidly growing Indian community in New Zealand has established its own newspaper titles. The earliest such home-grown title I’ve traced so far is the New Zealand Indian Times published in Mangere from September 1993 to October 1994. This included content in four languages: English, Hindi, Gujurati and Urdu. Ref: AWNS-19010215-4-6, a group of officers from the Indian Army, 1901, Sir George Grey Special Collections The Christchurch based Kiwi Indian , began publication in November 2001, but also lasted little more than a year. By contrast, the Auckland based Indian Newslink was established in November 1999, and is New Zealand’s longest-lasting Indian newspaper (issue 461 came out on 1 July 2020). Ref: AWNS-19010222-7-2, Indian troops viewing Auckland from the summit of Mt Eden, 1901, Sir George Grey Special Collections The Indian Times , published in Otahuhu monthly from September 2003 to June 2004, included mostly English content, with a small Hindi l...

A new exhibition at Turnbull Library Gallery called 'Logs to Blogs' opened on  29 July and runs until 28 September in Wellington. Focusing on diaries and the many different forms that this takes, a wide range of diaries and their authors are included in this exhibition. Find out more about the exhibition and the planned series of related talks. Ref: 4-7046, woman writing, Sir George Grey Special Collections Auckland Libraries holds a number of fascinating diaries in its heritage collections. For example, Sir George Grey Special collections holds Mrs. Felton Mathew's original journal (or diary) of her voyage to New Zealand, March 2nd 1840 - February 21st 1844. Ref: NZMS 7, Sir George Grey Special Collections. The record can be viewed on Manuscripts Online - simply enter the search term felton mathew, which will bring up the diary and other material by Sarah, such as her sketch books and letters from her cousin and future husband. Ref: 2-V1108, man writing, Sir G...