Heritage et AL

Awekura is a blog and podcast series that highlights treasures within Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. In this series, library specialists provide a window into the world of these special collections.   Recently we opened Lupe I Vao Ese, a Pacific heritage exhibition at Auckland Central City Library. The phrase "Lupe I Vao Ese" is a poetic metaphor from Gagana Sāmoa, translating as "doves in different pastures." It expresses how measina - the cultural treasures of Moana Oceania - travel across time and place, carrying the voices of ancestors into the present and beyond.   Featuring in the exhibition and discussed in the interview below, Pamata Toleafoa, Curator Pasifika, highlights tapa as one of the measina displayed in the exhibition. Of interest is a contemporary [1983] unique ephemeral greeting card, made in tapa and depicting Tongan traditional dress.    Image: Front page of the ephemera. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections Eph-Item00012. T...

Pasifika at Auckland Libraries is well underway and there is lots you can take part in . To get you in the mood, listen to the Pacific Islands music playlist  that has been specially created for this festival. You can also check out the  Pacific resources  at Auckland Libraries. This includes a range of heritage collections: online resources, Pacific Island family history resources (Central Auckland Research Centre), Pacific newspapers (South Auckland Research Centre) and reference materials at the research centres . There are also significant collections in the Sir George Grey Special Collections, including a tapa cloth book collected during Cooks' three voyages to the southern hemisphere. This has now been digitised and can be accessed online and you can read about the project to track down the other Cook tapa cloth books known to exist. To further celebrate and honour the contribution that Pacific Islands communities make to the cultural mix of peoples...

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

If you were intrigued by the image of the tapa cloth book included two posts ago, then read on … Housed in the Sir George Grey Special Collections at Auckland Central Library is one of thirty surviving, individually distinct copies of ‘A catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook’.  London: Printed for Alexander Shaw, 1787. Ref: 7-C1922, Sir George Grey Special Collections For more information, check out Real Gold: treasures of Auckland City Libraries . Other copies can be found at the Alexander Turnbull Library and the British Museum .