Active Archives event recap

On the 28th of February we held a very successful ‘Active Archives’ event in conjunction with the regional branches of National Digital Forum (NDF) and the Archives & Records Association of NZ (ARANZ). With a group of around 50 people we came from all parts of the GLAM sector and included participants from local and central government, tertiary and secondary education, volunteer groups, museums, and the private sector. It was a wonderful chance to hear some truly interesting presentations, engage with the Canterbury Disaster Salvage Team, network with each other and have a moment to think outside of our everyday boxes!

The day began with presentations by Canterbury Disaster Salvage Team (CDST) members Joanna Condon (Archives NZ), Lydia Baxendell (University of Canterbury) and retiring member Lynn Campbell. It was a good chance to reflect on the work of the CDST since it began in the 1980’s and to gather feedback from our community as the team moves into the future. As well as the survey results (sent to Cantage members a few weeks ago) we broke into workshop groups and ran through a series of disaster related questions and brainstorming on what support our community would like to see from the CDST group in coming days.

The CDST also presented founding member and conservator Lynn Campbell with a special trophy and flowers to thank her for all of her hard work over her years. Many of our institutions have benefited from her help and guidance.

Left to right: CDST members Joanna Condon, Lynn Campbell, Julie Sowby, Lydia Baxendell.

After lunch we reflected on the UNESCO Memory of the World project – presented by Caroline Etherington and Jo Condon from Archives NZ and Erin Kimber, from University of Canterbury. They shared recent Canterbury nominations, inscriptions to the register from their own institutions and their experience of the process. The Canterbury Provincial Government papers inscribed on the register were shared in an earlier Cantage blog post but further details of all collections on the NZ register, including the three held by the Macmillan Library (Armson Collins architectural drawings, Tokyo War Crimes collection and Ursula Bethall collection) can be seen at: https://unescomow.nz/new-zealand-register

The afternoon continued with a discussion on the ethics of the colourisation of black & white photos led by Matthew O’Sullican (Keeper of Photographs, Air Force Museum of New Zealand). The conversation raised all kinds of questions and gave lots of food for thought around not only colourisation but the rise of AI, copyright and how we will deal with collection challenges of the future.

The last session of the day was led by Jonathan Hunt from Catalyst on Linked Data. This included an exercise where we broke into groups and managed to successfully publish some linked data ourselves on NZ artists. It was a technical exercise that pulled some of us out of our comfort zone but again allowed us to broaden our thinking on different aspects of access and metadata outside of our day to day experiences.

Thanks to everyone who helped organise this joint event (Helen Thomas and Matthew O’Sullivan from NDF, Evan Greensides from ARANZ and Joanna Condon from Archives NZ), to the Cantage committee for helping on the day and to all of our presenters. Keep an eye out for our next event and come and join us!

Introducing Waimakariri Heritage

Waimakariri Libraries recently launched their new site, Waimakariri Heritage.

This is a  permanent digital archive, which includes books, audio and video files, over 450 images, and an interactive map of the area. This project has been in the works for the past year, and the Waimakariri Libraries team have been working hard to get content onto the platform. 

Image: The Kairaki Camping Ground, 1968.

Waimakariri Heritage is a place to preserve memories and share them with the community. The Waimakariri Libraries team is looking forward to connecting with different groups in the community who want to learn about the area’s history and have memories to share. We are also excited about the potential for students and schools in the area to use the platform as part of the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum and would encourage student contributions. North Canterbury has a unique history, and the site will enhance connections to our past, present and future.

We are adding new stories and collections all the time and you can also contribute your own memories and comments by registering with the website. We would love your help to identify and name people and places in some of the images in the collection. You will also be able to share your stories – this can be a written memory, oral history or photographs of people, places, events etc. We would love to hear about life in the past and life today!

For further information please email library.heritage@wmk.govt.nz or phone (03) 311 8901.

Exploring the past through Canterbury Stories

Are you tired of the present? Want to meander down memory lane? Interested in doing some research? Or perhaps just to remind yourself what Christchurch looked like before the earthquakes.

Canterbury Stories has over 70,000 digital heritage items for you to explore from home! These include photographs, negatives, maps, videos and archival items relating to Canterbury from the 1850s to the 2020s covering a wide variety of topics.

If you find an item that you can provide more information for or memories about, you can do this. You can add comments and stories so that we all know more about what took place. You just need to create an account and be logged in.

You can also create your own mini collection by gathering items in to a set. You can then share the set with friends and family. To do this, you will need to create an account and be logged in. Come up with a name for your set then search or browse the collections or explore the existing sets to gather the items you want. You can create multiple sets and your set can have up to 450 images, so have fun exploring and gathering! See the Canterbury Stories Contribute page for more information on how to create a set.

Gail and Maeve
Digital Content Team
Christchurch City Libraries

View more images on Canterbury Stories

Canterbury Provincial Government Records Digitisation Project – Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand

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.

Session 22 – Petition – Inhabitants of Christchurch: For the improvement of the Zig Zag Sumner Road – 30 Aug 1864 [Series 20410]

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

CCC Archives – Inward Correspondence 1862-1863

The Christchurch City Council Archives are beginning to digitise and make publicly available some of our most vulnerable, fragile and fascinating early records of the Council. CCC/ARC/343/4 – the first volume of inward correspondence to the Christchurch City Council from May 1862-March 1863 is now complete and available to the public to view.

This volume of correspondence includes the very early transactions with the Provincial Government at the time of the establishment of CCC, such as the allocation of 10,000 acres of ‘waste lands’ to the city (item 1, page 1, February 19^th 1862) and the election of the first Municipal Council (item 2, page 3, February 26^th 1862). As expected, there are many letters regarding the inevitable work that took place in the early days of the city – draining swampy land, dealing with of sanitary conditions (or lack thereof), the building of roads, footpaths, and bridges, sinking of artesian wells amongst other things. But they also feature a wide range of issues and concerns that were facing the citizens of the early city. Interesting letters include item 94 (page 166, 15^th Nov 1862) from the volunteer fire brigade requesting the Council to help them pay the men who assist them during a fire ‘as it is usual during a fire of any magnitude to employ men from the crowd of bystanders’. Or a letter of outrage from the Albion Cricket Club (item 85, page 149, 20^th Oct 1862) over a young man who insisted on riding his horse through their cricket games in Latimer Square (not to mention their newly prepared ground). Or W G Carver (the Officer of Customs) wanting to step down from his responsibility from firing the signal gun, at that time fired each Sat at 12pm for the regulation of time for the public, which you’ll find in item 49 (page 80, 5^th July 1862). He also suggests the time between Christchurch and Lyttelton be regulated so both towns maintained the same public time, particularly with the advent of the electric telegraph allowing ‘instant communication’. Concerns about public health include the letter from T W Maude (Provincial Government Secretary) from 12^th June 1862 (item 36, page 59) which suggested the council pass a regulation for the public to ‘cleanse their houses’ in cases of fever ‘for the prevention of spread of infection’. Not to mention the danger of the lack of lighting in certain areas of the city as pointed out by Frank Guinness (Inspector of Police) on the 12^th December 1862 (item 108, page 191) – ‘the danger to anyone passing on horseback is considerable – perhaps the Council could take some means to have this danger lessened’.

This first volume of correspondence is now being hosted by our friends at Christchurch City Libraries via Canterbury Stories with links to it from our CCC Archives webpages:

Inward correspondence | canterburystories.nz

https://ccc.govt.nz/council-archives#correspondence

This volume of correspondence has been indexed and this is available on our website – so you can search on the name of a person or street, or subject, that you are interested in. The index can be found at 22-892832-CCC-ARC-343-4-23-CCC-Archives-Inventory-Inward-Correspondence-Indexed-Boxes-1862-1877.pdf

Please note that only the first volume from the index has so far been digitised and it appears in the index as CH343/6a, items 1-147. The next volume will be digitised in the near future.

If you have any questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you – archives@ccc.govt.nz!