Wellington City Archives

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Wellington City Archives
WCC Archives sign.jpg
Wellington City Archives
Established1994
Location28 Barker Street,
Wellington, New Zealand
Coordinates 41°17′53″S174°46′47″E / 41.297993°S 174.77986°E / -41.297993; 174.77986
Type archive
Website wellington.govt.nz/your-council/archives

The Wellington City Archives preserves records of the Wellington City Council and other organisations relating to the history of Wellington, New Zealand. Established in 1994, the Council archives were housed in a single purpose-built facility in 1995, opened to the public in 1996, and made available online since 2007.

Contents

The archives are open to the public and receive up to 1000 information requests a month, from Wellington City Council staff and the general public. About half of the requests are building consent searches, and up to 300 are assisting council staff preparing Land Information Memorandums (LIM). [1] The remainder range from historical and genealogical research requests to enquiries about land history or property information. [2]

History

Wellington City Archivist Michelle Redward and Archives Assistant Adrian Humphris in 1995, shortly after the Archives opened - initially there were just two staff. WCC Archives 1995.tif
Wellington City Archivist Michelle Redward and Archives Assistant Adrian Humphris in 1995, shortly after the Archives opened – initially there were just two staff.

Wellington was the first site of local government in New Zealand, and the city's archives date back to 1842 when the Wellington Borough Council was established. [3] As recently as 1994, council records were stored at more than 10 places around Wellington, loosely classified using a system devised in 1926. Many were housed in sub-standard conditions, at risk from temperature extremes and leaks, in breach of the Local Government Act requirements for the preservation of government archives. [4] Some were stored below sea level in the Town Hall basement, and periodically soaked in seawater. [5] The "rotting" documents were at risk of being lost forever, so the City Council approved relocating them to a central facility at a cost of $300,000. [6]

The Wellington City Archives were formally established in 1994, and Michelle Redward was appointed in March as Council archivist to supervise the move. [7] The new Wellington City Archives was opened by Mayor Mark Blumsky on 26 June 1996, in an environmentally-controlled and earthquake-proof facility off Tory Street, with 5 km of shelving over 730 square metres of storage area. [5] [8] The Archives were expanded in 2005 to 1000 square metres, creating a work room and meeting room. [9] [1] In 2007, more than 370,000 collection items and 9,000 scanned images were made available online, including large numbers of digitised building permit and consent records. [10]

In 2016 the Archives partnered with information management company Techtonics to develop a new information repository, a project that won the 2017 ALGIM Information and Records Management Project of the Year award. [2] Wellington City Archives is partnering with startup Excio to make more photographs from the collection available directly to people's mobile devices. [11]

List of Wellington City Archives managers

Holdings

The 1842 letter from Chauncey Townsend to James Marsh, Wellington City Archives' oldest correspondence. It is written in two directions to make the best use of scarce paper. AA001-2d; Letter from Chauncey Townsend to James Marsh - 1842.jpg
The 1842 letter from Chauncey Townsend to James Marsh, Wellington City Archives' oldest correspondence. It is written in two directions to make the best use of scarce paper.

Wellington City Archives, one of the largest territorial archives in New Zealand, [12] contains 1.4 million documents, including over 20,000 photographs, which would stretch 10 km if laid back-to-back. [3] [12] The archive's collections include:

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References

  1. 1 2 3 "History at his fingertips". Dominion Post. 29 April 2017. Retrieved 28 December 2018.
  2. 1 2 Lepla, Ruth (7 July 2017). "Digging Deep". NZ Local Government Magazine. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 "Treasure trove of city history". The Dominion Post. 26 December 2008. p. B3.
  4. ↑ Murphy, Lyn (17 March 1994). "Archives to get new home". The Evening Post.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Historical goldmine". Capital Times. 26 June 1996.
  6. ↑ "Council documents 'rotting'". The Dominion. 21 March 1994.
  7. ↑ "Wellington City finally appoints archivist". ARANZ Newsletter. 16: 1. April 1994.
  8. 1 2 3 "Archives become more accessible". The Dominion. 25 June 1996.
  9. ↑ "Bigger, better space for our civic archives". Absolutely Positively Wellington. June 2005.
  10. ↑ "New online access to archives". The Dominion Post. 15 March 2007. p. A11.
  11. ↑ "Wellington City Archives and Excio Bring Heritage Photos into the 21st Century". Ministry for Culture and Heritage. 20 February 2018. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  12. 1 2 Strachan, Stuart (22 October 2014). "Archives – Government archives". Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  13. ↑ Jacobson, Julie (8 January 2004). "Cows, 'turkies' and parrots you can shoot – it's Wellington, 1842". The Dominion Post. p. A2.
  14. ↑ "Earliest correspondence". Wellington City Council. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  15. ↑ "City Archives launches early rate book web module". The Dominion Post. 24 May 2007. p. A11.
  16. 1 2 "New home for harbour records". Absolutely Positively Wellington. February 2005. p. 14.
  17. ↑ Greenland, James (26 June 2012). "Where does Wellington's history live?". Stuff. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  18. ↑ "Wellington City Archives expands its online database". The Dominion Post. 7 February 2008. p. A9.
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