Heritage et AL

To celebrate the Lunar New Year and the beginning of the Year of the Ram Auckland Libraries are running a series of events across the region. If you are in the central library do pop into the Newspaper Reading Room on the second floor and have a look at the beautiful display Heritage & Research staff created featuring a traditional tea set. If you can't make it into the library have a look online at Auckland Libraries newly launched Chinese Facebook page .      To celebrate the Year of the Snake, two years ago, we wrote about our Historypin collection documenting Chinese communities in Auckland and also more broadly about Chinese resources available at Auckland Libraries . The image below shows Rewi Alley ’s son Allen Alley at the opening of a specialist Chinese collection, named ‘The Rewi Alley Collection’ at the Manurewa library in 1989. This was an appropriately named collection as Rewi’s brother Geoffrey was New Zealand’s first National Librarian....

Continuing on in a similar vein as our previous summer holiday themed posts, we thought we would focus on another common experience from the New Zealand summer holidays: traffic jams. Hopefully you've managed to avoid them over the past few weeks, but if not this selection of images will help add some levity to your memory if you did encounter one. As these photographs show, traffic jams over the summer holidays are not just a recently occurring phenomenon. Ref: Traffic jam on Upper Symonds Street, 1920s, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 589-58.

Sheep, the cornerstone of the agricultural industry in New Zealand since the 1850s and a very important part of the economy. Sheep have shaped the farming environment throughout the country and spawned many a joke. Where would we be without New Zealand lamb and merino clothing? When refrigeration on ships became available in 1882, meat was able to be shipped around the world, including to Britain, and the industry flourished. The population peaked in 1982 at 70 million but has steadily reduced over the years as other industries have come to the fore such as dairy farming and the timber industry. With around 40 million sheep, that is still a whopping 10 sheep per person. Over half the sheep in New Zealand are Romney, which is an English breed used for both meat and wool. What to find out more?  Te Ara has a great section on sheep farming and its importance . Now you are all set to wander through the sheep of yesteryear, drawn from the heritage collections at Auckland Librar...