Heritage et AL

With the cricket season in full swing it’s timely to look at three of the earliest books about cricket in New Zealand. On the tented fields of the south, 1882 along with Pavilion echoes from the south, 1884-5 and the less poetically titled The Auckland cricketers’ trip to the south [1873], are early accounts of the Auckland cricket team’s tours of the country that helped popularise the sport in the province. Ref: Henry Winkelmann, Showing a group of schoolboys playing cricket in Auckland Domain..., 9 December 1901, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1-W152.

The map below is one of many beautiful and intricate hand-coloured illustrations and maps in Lodovico Guicciardini's book  on the Low Countries.  Sir George Grey Special Collection 's copy is a French edition published in Antwerp in 1567. It was donated to the library by Henry Shaw. The map is of Bolduch ('s-Hertogenbosch or the Duke's Forest) in the southern Netherlands. Iain Sharp notes in  Real Gold  that Guicciardini's book was one of the best sellers of the sixteenth century. Image ref: Map from: Lodovico Guicciardini.  Description de tovt le Païs-Bas, avtrement dict la Germanie inferievre, ov, Basse-Allemaigne. Antwerp: Guillaume Silvius, 1567. Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 7-C1964. The two main methods for printing maps in the sixteenth century were relief (usually woodcut) and intaglio (copper engraving or etching). The map pictured is a copperplate engraving. The intaglio technique involves engraving l...

Sir George Grey Special Collections holds a number of road, street and tramping track maps produced by the Automobile Association (AA). Ref: Automobile Association 'road surface' motor touring map..., 1930s, NZ map 372, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries.  The following information is from John McCrystal's book 'One hundred years of motoring in New Zealand'  which provides a great introduction to the history of the organisation. The AA was founded in 1903 and began as an automobile club for motoring enthusiasts. One of the earliest functions of the associations was signposting. In 1915, members of the Auckland branch of the AA began voluntarily marking routes. In 1925, Roy Champtaloup drew the first official AA road map by hand. Soon afterwards map making became more sophisticated, and for a time, both the Auckland and Wellington associations had their own cartographic departments. The oldest AA map in Sir George Grey Special Collect...

Our digital team at Auckland Libraries have created an online exhibition to complement the current Sir George Grey Special Collections exhibition, the Big O.E. The exhibition is running until 14 June 2015 on the second floor of the Central Library and the online exhibition is located here. Ref: Ron Clark, Oriana, 1960s, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1207-1448.