Since April this year, the Ōtautahi Regional Office of Archives New Zealand has been working on a project to further digitise some of the records of the Canterbury Provincial Government. New Zealand Micrographic Services was contracted to do the scanning and capturing, setting up a digitisation “hub” onsite at Wigram.
[L to R] Annie, Ligaya, Madison, and Jess from the NZMS digitisation team hard at work capturing the Canterbury Provincial Government records at Archives NZ in Wigram.
The project’s aim is to digitise two series of related records. The first is Series 20435, ‘Public Records Office records 1852-1876’, consisting of records that were deposited with the Canterbury Public Record Office during the Provincial Government period. These records can be described as the Provincial Government’s own archives and contain important legal documents such as contracts, warrants of appointment, and leases.
PLAN referred to in Peacock’s Wharf Bill – 8 Jun 1857 [Series 20435]
The second is Series 20410, ‘Papers of the [Canterbury] Provincial Council 1853-1875’ which consists of papers tabled at the Provincial Council sessions. These records are the surviving papers presented to, or created by, the Canterbury Provincial Council in each of its 42 sessions from 1853 to 1875 and include committee minutes and reports, petitions, financial returns and statistics, and copies of correspondence tabled.
Between 1852 and 1876, Aotearoa was divided into 6 provinces each with an elected council and superintendent. The Provincial Government took over from the Canterbury Association and their Land Office based in Lyttelton after the passing of the Constitution Act in 1853. The Canterbury Provincial Government existed until 1876 after the Abolition of the Provinces Act was passed in 1875. Over 3600 records have been prepped and digitised and are currently being ingested into the Government Digital Archive, the shared digital repository between the National Library and Archives New Zealand. This adds to previous in-house digitisation projects for the ‘Canterbury Association correspondence’ [Series 12515] and the ‘Special Subject Files’ [Series 28231], consisting of correspondence from the Provincial Secretary and the Secretary for Public Works, which are available online through Collections.
Grommets!
To prepare these records for digitisation requires a basic level of preservation work, removing paper clips, split pins, and grommets. A grommet is a small round metal stud that clips through paper records, attaching them together much like a paper clip but a lot harder to remove over 160 years later! It appears that nineteenth century office clerks loved to use grommets, attaching several to just one file. To remove them requires a large mallet, the right size hole punch and some muscle. Our “grommet removal station” was going full tack removing thousands of little steel donuts from these historical documents.
by Nick Wotton – Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand, Ōtautahi Regional Office
Cantage - Canterbury Heritage 