Seven new inscriptions on UNESCO Memory of the World NZ register

Memory of the World New Zealand Trust Chair Dianne Macaskill announced the new inscriptions at a function at Auckland Libraries on 29 November 2017.

There are now 27 documentary heritage collections on the New Zealand register. Each is a valuable source of research for historians, researchers, educators and many others in New Zealand and the world.

UNESCO recognition draws attention to the significance of documentary heritage and the importance of ensuring it is preserved and made accessible.

The successful inscriptions are:

(nominated by Auckland Libraries)

The personal archive of John (Jack) Thomas Diamond MBE. As a self-described amateur historian and archeologist, Jack documented the history of West Auckland over a time of significant change from the 1930s to the 1980s.

(nominated by the Presbyterian Research Centre, Dunedin)

A collection of documents gathered since 1959 by Dr James Ng and his wife Eva Ng which sheds considerable light on 19th and early 20th Century Chinese history in New Zealand.

(nominated by the Hocken Collections, Dunedin)

A record of more than a century of architectural development in New Zealand demonstrating the way New Zealanders have lived in their built environment. Includes architectural plans/drawings, building specifications, contract records, financial records, photographs, and other business records for thousands of building projects between 1862 and 2008.

(nominated by Nelson Provincial Museum and Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington)

A complete and comprehensive photographic legacy, spanning nearly a century of life in Nelson, Tasman and beyond. Surveying society and presenting its inhabitants, the collection constitutes an unparalleled photographic study of the development of a new nation from soon after European settlement until after World War II.

(nominated by Auckland Libraries)

Personal papers of one-armed war hero, crowd-stirring orator, best-selling novelist, feisty politician and outspoken broadcaster John Alfred Alexander Lee (1891-1982). The papers document New Zealand social conditions in the first decades of the 20th century, the growth of a distinctively New Zealand literature in the 1930s cover the inside workings of the New Zealand Labour Party from its foundation to the formation of the First Labour Government in this period.

(nominated by Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision)

Produced by Television New Zealand, Kaleidoscope was an arts documentary series made for television. As the only television arts programme in New Zealand, the series documented, often in long-form interviews, a wide range of New Zealand arts and artists

(nominated by Alexander Turnbull Library)

Official First World War photographs New Zealand’s official First World War photographs by Henry Armytage Sanders and Thomas Scales. Documents activities of New Zealanders at places of significance including the Somme, Passchendaele, and Le Quesnoy, as well as aspects of the soldiers’ day-to-day lives in camp and hospital. Also includes scenes at convalescent camps and peace celebrations, and views of soldiers participating in sporting events and sightseeing.