Heritage et AL

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...

Earlier this week the National Library announced that the latest batch of newspapers has just gone live on Papers Past . Auckland Libraries have contributed two newspapers from our collections to the project: the Pukekohe and Waikuku Times from 1921-1924 and the New Zealander from 1853-1866. The Pukekohe & Waiuku Times (later known as the Franklin Times), one of South Auckland’s longest-lasting local newspapers, was published in Pukekohe from 1912 to 1971. On 8 March 1912 Pukekohe businessmen Richard Eames and William Cargill brought out the first issue of the Pukekohe & Waiuku Times. The new tabloid was just four pages long and came out once a week. As demand grew it increased in size and frequency, becoming bi-weekly from 1 October 1912 and tri-weekly from 5 July 1915. Ref: excerpt from The Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 1, Issue 1, 8 March 1912, page 1. For a more in-depth look at the Pukekohe & Waiuku Times have a look at our blog post on Franklin ...

Over the years, many people have claimed to have a copy of the very first New Zealand Herald .   As there are only two known full copies, one with the publishers and the other with the National Library in Wellington, any other copy would be extremely valuable. Ref: excerpt from New Zealand Herald website, 27 February 2015. How then, can they be sure if the copy is indeed an original from 1863?

There are  a number of Shakespearean treasures in the Sir George Grey Special Collections at the Central City Library. Many of these are from the founding collections donated by Sir George Grey in 1882. The First Folio was the first edition to collect together 36 of Shakespeare's plays and is a highly prized publication. Without it, Shakespeare's plays would be lost to us. The publication was edited by the actors John Hemminge and Henry Condell and only about 1,000 copies were originally printed. The library's First Folio is one of just three in the Southern Hemisphere and one of only 228 remaining copies in the world. Thanks to Grey's donation, we are also the only library in NZ with a rare First Folio and a contemporary quarto of one of the plays (Pericles, 1619). The library also hold many publications by Shakespeare's contemporaries, such as Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser and John Donne. Dr. Emma Smith of Hertford College, University of Oxford University...

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...

This blog post looks at the Abercrombie family’s outings during the 1930s and 1940s. The memories of this West Auckland family were documented by Ken Abercrombie through 4 photo albums of exquisite hand-coloured family snaps. These albums are held at the West Auckland Research Centre and you can view the first album online . A significant and attractive feature of the albums is that the majority of the prints have been hand-coloured and captioned by the photographer. Ref: KRA-PA-02-049-00, Ken Abercrombie, Album 2, West Auckland Research Centre Ken Abercrombie (b.1916) was a keen photographer, first becoming interested as a 16 year old boy when his parents gave him a camera – a ‘Balovo’, a German make. Ref: Ken Abercrombie's camera, early 1930s, West Auckland Research Centre At this time the Abercrombie family were living in Blockhouse Bay where Ken’s father, Roy had started a carrying business. The photo below shows his International truck. Ref: KRA-PA-02-031-04, ...

During WW1 (and indeed WW2), soldiers aboard troopships en route to war sometimes published magazines. Theses troopship magazines ranged from hand-written to professional looking publications. They were highly valued and were intended to be informative, entertaining and to help the morale of soldiers. A number were also written on the return voyages back to NZ. Ref: AWNS-19150708-47-3, 1915, NZ troopship Ludzow at Alexandria, Egypt, 1915, Sir George Grey Special Collections Auckland War Memorial Museum Library has recently completed the digitisation of its troopship magazines . These are are listed on the library's online catalogue and are also available as pdfs (simply click on the publication, then click on the link in the Notes field). Examples of the museum's holdings of troopship magazines include: 'Father Neptune's day on the New Zealand Transport 75, "S.S. Waitemata" and other items of interest / N.Z.E.F. 21st Reinforcements', 1917 (D526....

In late 2012 the Mangere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board provided funding for a project to digitise the archival holdings of two local historical society collections. This included the Otahuhu Historical Society and the Mangere Historical Society which hold varied and interesting collections containing a wealth of local history interest. Both societies hold original archival manuscripts, letters, photographs, historical objects and scarce books, pamphlets and ephemera. I have undertaken this digitisation project as part of the staff of the South Auckland Research Centre team. It has been a great way to spend time working in the community and to gain an insight into the history of Auckland. eHive is a web based cataloguing system system on the Internet which gives small to medium sized cultural heritage organisations the opportunity to raise the profile of their holdings and share their collections with others. This enables researchers, specialist and general interest groups and in...

Papers Past contains the digitised content from key New Zealand newspapers and periodicals. It's a veritable treasure trove! Overall content in Papers Past covers the years from 1839 to 1945 and includes 77 publications from all regions of New Zealand. And all of this content is fully searchable using a basic keyword search or a more advanced search option, which allows you to narrow your search down using dates and content type (e.g. articles, adverts). Papers Past have recently added 40 years worth of the New Zealand Herald , covering the period from 1885 to1924. Content on the system starts in 1863, when the paper was established. Previous installments of digitised content, (as mentioned in blog post on 8 August 2013), took the reader up to 1864, so it is great to have to have the start of the 20th century added. Ref: 1-W625, Looking west from Queen Street up Wyndham Street showing the premises of the NZ Herald, 1925, Sir George Grey Special Collections

In May 2012 the work of students from Bruce McLaren Intermediate School brought local life to the walls of the West Auckland Research Centre through the 'It takes a village: photo voice' exhibition (see post on 25 May 2012 if you want to read more about the exhibition). Today it is back in a new form as a   virtual experience of the original physical exhibition . This gives it the potential for reaching a regional, national and even international audience!  Ref: Home page, It takes a village website, West Auckland Research Centre Village residents and students are pleased that then are now able to send friends and family a link to the exhibition which highlights the work of the students. Ref: Vision Waitakere Gardens, It takes a village website, West Auckland Research Centre  Each village link includes stunning portraits and narratives reflections of the conversations captured between students and older residents. Read more about the project .  ...

Auckland Libraries is fast approaching the end of a project to digitise all the Auckland Weekly News photographic supplements published between 1898 and 1943. You can already see all of the photographs up to 1927 on the Heritage Images database. The project has turned up some fascinating and intriguing images, such as an 1886 design by John Crook of Ponsonby for an airship (see below), imaginatively seen flying over central Auckland.  Ref: AWNS-19020710-1-2, Sir George Grey Special Collections From the outset it was decided to digitise all the published photographs, not just those obviously relating to New Zealand. One of these images from around the world, is a rather dramatic photograph of Victor Grayson, addressing a crowd of unemployed workers at Tower Hill in London in 1908 (see below).  Ref: AWNS-19081210-7-3, Sir George Grey Special Collections Inspired by this image, research has revealed that Grayson was an intriguing character. Du...