Now Online – Otago Witness Illustrated supplements
Author: Anne Jackman, Trustee
Researchers know how useful and intriguing historical photographs can be. As well as their value to academics and others, they pull the ordinary person into reminiscing about the past, and sharing their memories and insights.
There are many New Zealand photograph collections online now – DigitalNZ is a portal to New Zealand collections of all sizes – and the National Library of New Zealand’s Papers Past site has revolutionised negotiating the newspaper historical record. However, one of the frustrations has been where its source files have included photographic supplements that had been filmed many years ago when production concentrated on the written word and the focus was getting the best quality for that at the time, leaving the digitised photographic supplements looking murky and difficult to read.
This was the case with the Otago Witness 1851-1932, a regional newspaper that included significant supplements of illustrations. Many are captioned with places, names, events and a host of other historical markers.
Researchers of every kind have found this frustrating, resorting to revisiting the paper record to have high-quality images taken. Inevitably this has meant re-filming from the original paper copy, threatening its long-term preservation and not allowing it to be retired into storage.
In 2023 The Preserving Local History and Educational Trust was approached by two southern institutions both of which have many requests for quality copies of these illustrations, and both recognise fulfilling these is likely to cause long-term damage to the original papers. Although contrary to the Trust’s caveat that digitised newspapers would not be considered for Trust funding, this was considered a special case and has been done.
The processes needed to replace the files on Papers Past preclude this happening soon, but the Trust has made the illustrations available through its Recollect site which is available to researchers anywhere, subject to the usual restraints under the New Zealand Copyright Act and rights agreements with the publisher.