A gift for the future
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.
Your Stories committed to this initiative and the sustainable impact it can deliver.
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.
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.
Mass digitisation of historical community newspapers
“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.
Join us
Embark on the experience of seeing this project come to life.
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.
“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.
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.
“We want to ensure that every school and community has access to its local history as well as the national perspective. Accessing newspapers in their physical form (or on microfilm) limits access. Digitisation is more equitable, and can deliver the stories, adverts, photographs and editorials that make up a newspaper to everyone anywhere where there is internet access. Schools and public library networks provide free internet to those who do not have internet at home”
Andy Fenton, Chairperson, The Preserving Local History and Educational Trust.
Support
Ways to make a donation.
We welcome your support!
A koha, a donation, or a bequest for all time. Or, a contribution of your time or expertise. To make a donation, you can make a deposit into the Trust’s bank account 06-0294-0984761-00 or via our Givealittle Fundraising Page.
As a charitable trust any donations received toward the project will receive a tax rebate. On receiving your donation we will provide you with a donation receipt.
To learn more or discuss sponsorship and partnering opportunities contact Renee Tanner, Fundraising Manager, Your Stories, on 0211496707 renee@lightboxprojects.com
Resources
We’d love you to promote this project wherever you can. Please download our poster to display.
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.
Available on Papers Past
Digitisation not only enables preservation, it also gives voice to a range of communities that might otherwise be lost, opens online access, and provides new methods for discovering and reusing knowledge.
Following digitisation, these pages will be made accessible to the public, free, and online. In partnership with the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa; digitised pages will be available via Papers Past, the National Library’s digitised archive of historical documents.
While we wait for the images to uploaded onto Papers Past you can visit the Trust’s Recollect site to gain immediate access to some of the digitised newspapers.
Marlborough Express, Volume LIV, Issue 196, 19 August 1920, Papers Past.
Papers Past is a well-regarded and well-used resource that includes digital copies of over seven million pages of newspapers published since 1840. It offers an accessible way to search newspaper stories from Aotearoa New Zealand. The project will connect with the National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA) administered by the National Library which digitally preserves a range of documentary heritage, including digitised newspapers.
Our project is wholly independent from, but complements, the National Library’s Digitisation Plan 2019-2022. The library’s plan focuses on digitising its own hard-copy newspaper collections and running the collaborative digitisation programme, and our project is outside the scope of the library’s digitisation plan and collections policy.
The Preserving Local History and Educational Trust was awarded Lottery Environment and Heritage funding in early 2022 for phase one of the project which is currently underway.
Using the Lottery Environment and Heritage funding, in phase one we are underway digitally preserving 200,000 pages of community newspapers including:
The Ruapehu Bulletin (1987-2000)
The Taupō Times (1958-1990)
The Marlborough Express (1921-1943)
This involves working closely with heritage colleagues at Ruapehu Media Ltd., Taupō Museum and Art Gallery, and The Marlborough Museum and Historical Society.
These titles were identified by connections of our Trustees, and researched by our expert advisor, researcher and historian Dr Ross Harvey, and also by the Alexander Turnbull Library’s Assistant Curator, Newspapers and Serials. This work is ongoing, and we are unearthing more titles to be digitised and preserved.
Make sure you get in touch with us via the button below if there is a particular newspaper title you would like to request to have digitised and uploaded to Papers Past.
The editor of the Ruapehu Bulletin, Robert Milne, delivers newspapers for digitisation.
Viewing an issue of The Marlborough Express on Papers Past.
We would like to express our gratitude and thanks to The National Library and NZMS for their valuable contribution and support.