Heritage et AL

What has many editions and only one? Tāmaki Makaurau’s long-running newspaper, The Auckland Star. A researcher’s worst nightmare is knowing of a source that no longer exists, and the Star is a source like no other in that it was once published as several editions every day, yet nobody bothered to collect them all. Auckland Council Libraries holds a near-continuous run of the daily periodical from its origin as the Evening Star in the 1870s to its present incarnation as the Sunday Star–Times . However, a decision was made over a century ago to only retain a single daily copy, a mere sampling of the Star’s copious output. This decision still impacts historians and researchers today and raises important questions: why did the Star print so many daily editions and what are we missing by their absence? Image: The Auckland Star masthead with various edition stamps underneath dating from 1926 through 1975. Despite covering the same geographic area—urban Auckland—the long-running newspa...

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...

In recent years, a number of Auckland-based newspapers have sprung up to cater for local Pacific Island communities. The majority of these publications have been produced for the Samoan community.   The first such title was Samoana , a Samoan-language weekly tabloid which was established in Mangere in 1979. This initially offered mostly Samoan news, but over the years included an increasing amount of news about the New Zealand-based Samoaon community. It ceased publication in 2006. In 1997 the rival Otahuhu-based Weekly Samoa Post also began publication. This lasted until 2005, being succeeded by Le Samoa Post until 2007. Like Samoana , the Post included mostly Samoan language material.   Ref: Banner for Samoana newspaper, South Auckland Research Centre