Mass digitisation of historical community newspapers
Your Stories
Local history is integral in shaping our communities, and the preservation of these stories and records for the future is vital. The goal of our Your Stories project is to digitise, and make available, all historical newspapers (from 1840 to 2000) that are at risk of loss or decay. This will ensure that the stories and histories from diverse communities right across urban and rural New Zealand are preserved for current and future generations.
Why Newspapers?
Newspapers are comprehensive records that capture local events, stories, and knowledge all about the tāngata, businesses, clubs, and organisations that build a community. Preserving a community’s history is crucial to understanding who we are, and our tūrangawaewae.
A significant number of these newspapers are stored in poor conditions, often looked after by volunteer community groups. They are fragile documents, not easily accessed by the public and are deteriorating year after year. Without urgent preservation, these stories will be missing from our nation’s kōrero.
Who Benefits?
The need has been identified within the library sector, community sector, by individuals, and at the Government level. It is also backed by the use statistics for newspapers that have already been digitised via the National Library’s Papers Past – one of our country’s most researched databases/websites. We have received many letters of endorsement that speak to why this mahi needs to be done and praise the work our Trust is undertaking and intends to do.
At the Government level, there have been calls to increase our digital literacy, bring more things online, and reflect Aotearoa’s history in the education curriculum. The Government has acknowledged that fragile culture and heritage collections at risk of loss should be preserved and have made budget decisions to further these aims. COVID has exacerbated the problem. Creating an online resource re-opens access to our culture and heritage, and provides previously unavailable resources to schools and researchers.
The expected outcomes are that the project will deliver a nationwide asset for current and future generations, in perpetuity, while supporting the heritage sector and the Government mandate to establish New Zealand history in the education system: the new Te Marautanga o Aotearoa framework and Te Takanga o Te Wā and Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories curriculum. At the conclusion of the multi-year project, all historic newspapers at risk of loss (1840-2000) from around Aotearoa will be available for free to search online.
There are significant benefits for communities when we help them tell their stories and provide a wider view, and increased access, to our shared history. These benefits include:
Ensures the memory of local communities is preserved.
Unlocks knowledge and information about Iwi Māori and colonial settler history.
Increases representation and opens discourse about the stories that shaped our nation and provides a more balanced view of our collective, cultural history.
Facilitates research and supports a wider-ranging community of knowledge seekers including students, writers, genealogists, historians and researchers within and outside New Zealand.
Provides important and unique historic resources for the cultural industries, such as film and literature.
Provides smaller cultural and heritage societies and institutions access to digitisation capability.
The Benefits
“The benefits and value gained by digitising this material are numerous. The preservation of our district's heritage in itself provides the highest motivation but just as importantly this project assists us to provide an enhanced level of service in our heritage and information services and a more fit for purpose platform for disseminating information.”
Luisa Haines from Taupo Museum.
Embark on the experience of seeing this project come to life.
Join us
It’s a costly exercise, with an estimated two million pages from hundreds of newspapers from around Aotearoa to be digitised. The specialist equipment required, the training up of people across the country to undertake the workload, the research required to track down the papers and so forth. We are already underway with little finance, but the challenge now is to continue the much needed momentum, as they uncover papers in urgent need of preservation before they are lost for good.
The Trust believes that this should be done once, and done right, to protect our stories for many generations to come.
The Trust is committed to this initiative and the sustainable impact it can deliver.
How your support can help
By joining us, our funders, sponsors, donors and patrons assist the project by:
Increasing access to New Zealand’s history
Ensuring the memory of local communities is preserved, and their place in our national identity is given context
Enriching and raising awareness of our national identify
Increasing the arts, culture and heritage sector sustainability and resilience
As like minded organisations and people with a shared interest in providing for the future, we will share regular progress updates and news about the project.
“Our community papers are a gift from the past and with the technology and skills we have on hand today, there is an opportunity to make a very meaningful, hard-working, one-off, intergenerational gift that will transform the lives of millions of people now, and for the next century and beyond”
Ross Harvey, Advisor, The Preserving Local History and Educational Trust.
Support Your Stories
The Your Stories project requires financial support to be fulfilled. Our ‘ask’ of you, is to consider making a donation in support of the project, at a level that suits your capacity to give. Every contribution counts.
