Heritage et AL

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...

Image: Research Centre, Central City Library, 1998. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 669-183. Photographer: Kevin Durrant Do you want to start your family history research at home? We have a wide range of resources on the Auckland Libraries website and family history librarian Seonaid has provided information about these resources below that will help get you started.  📌Resources at Auckland Libraries  Family history research guides Our family history research guide can help you get started if you are a beginner, or assist you with questions like: What resources are available to help with finding records of births, deaths, and marriages?  What research resources are available for New Zealand specific research? When ordering an electronic printout of a birth, death and marriage, what information can I expect to receive for a birth that happened after 1875? Our guides also cover further New Zealand resources , immigration records , international resour...

Applications for the Auckland Library Heritage Trust Researcher in Residence scholarship are now open! Ref: John Rykenberg, Auckland dance band, 1959, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1269-A997-1. Now in its fifth year, this scholarship is offered by the Auckland Library Heritage Trust to assist with scholarly research and the promotion of the material held in Sir George Grey Special Collections at the Central City Library.

The heritage music collections at Auckland Libraries include a range of material, including cassettes, LPs, CDs, music scores and manuscript sheet music. The music collections cover a large range of genres and are continually expanding. Ref: Items from Sir George Grey Special Collections music collections, clockwise from top left:  Shocking Pinks (self-titled) CD, Ardijah 'Take a chance' CD, New Zealand poets read their work LP, Freebase 'Raw: live at Cause Celebre' cassette Auckland Libraries' music collections are of historic interest and relate to the development of New Zealand music. In November last year, the original manuscripts of  God Defend New Zealand ,  held at Sir George Grey Special Collections, received national recognition with inscription on the UNESCO Memory of the World New Zealand register of documentary heritage . Older forms of media, sometimes out-dated, hard to track down, unpopular or difficult to purchase, are also part of the ...

If you're looking for information on events in your area in the recent past you'll probably turn to your local newspaper. Suburban newspapers such as the Howick & Pakuranga Times , Eastern Courier , Manukau Courier , Papakura Courier and Post (Waiuku) can be invaluable sources of local news. However, these newspapers each cover quite a wide area and may not have quite the level of detail you want. In some areas, community groups also publish monthly or quarterly newsletters, which include a different range of views. One of the longest-lived examples of this type of newsletter is the Whitford Turanga Newsreel . This began publication as the Turanga Newsreel in 1947 and has come out unfailingly with 11 issues per year full of Whitford news ever since. A complete set is held at South Auckland Research Centre .  Ref: Footprints 01469, South Auckland Research Centre Similar titles include the Informer (Hunua), Kaiaua Compass , Karaka Chronicle , Peninsularama (Ma...

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