Tips and hints to help you with your research of local and NZ history online and in person at Wellington City Libraries

1. Online History Resources
Tips and hints to help you with your research
of local and NZ history

2. There are many different online resources available to assist you in researching NZ
history. Most contain information which would never be revealed in a Google search
and their number and coverage is growing on a monthly basis.
Familiarising yourself with these will better enable you to answer complex questions
which go beyond what you might expect to find in a published book. Their use will
often enable you to become a “historian” in the true sense by allowing you to interpret
information you uncover rather than relying on the opinion of others.
Some of these resources offer full information retrieval but many are only indexes
which will still require a visit to a library or an archive to obtain the full version.

3. A great place to start is our heritage page. You can find a link to this on the top bar of the
library’s main homepage

4. From that page, select “Local History” (but take some time to go back later and check
out the other options if you are unfamiliar with them)

5. Then to access our main in-house heritage databases, click here
…or scroll down the page to the appropriate point.

6. The two databases of particular
interest are the Wellington Local
History Database and the Evening
Post clipping database.

7. The Local History Database has been built up by current and former library staff over 15+ years
and now contains over 50,000 records. Initially designed to hold index information to newspaper
clippings, it now also contains specific references to books, biographical information, compiled
scrapbooks and items of ephemera held in the Central Library’s Rare Books Room. It is
particularly useful for tracking down newspaper articles published before the date coverage of
full-text newspaper databases (c. 1996) but after the cut-off point for Papers Past (1945). A
simple keyword will search across all significant fields including title, subject heading and the
abstract. Note that you need to come to the Central Library to view the actual item (locations are
given in the results) but the dates given can be very useful for tracking down when specific
events happened.

8. Here’s an example of a search on the
keyword “Antrim” (Antrim House is the
National Headquarters of the Historic Places
Trust at 63 Boulcott Street). Note the location
abbreviation of “WVF”. This refers to a hard-
copy of the clipping being held in the
Wellington Vertical File on the 2nd floor of the
Central Library (staff assistance is required
to access these – please ask at the
reference desk). However as a date of
publication has also been given, the
newspaper articles could also be found on
the microfilmed copies of the Evening Post
and the Dominion (also held on the 2nd floor).

9. The Evening Post Clippings database can be found
just below the link to the Local History database. Like
the Local History database it is also an index-only
resource. This collection was assembled by Evening
Post filing clerks and gifted to us following the
newspaper’s merger with the Dominion in 2002.
Unlike microfilmed copies of newspapers (which rely
on one knowing the date of publication), the EP
collection is arranged in subject-order and it is the
8000+ subject heading list that the database
searches. The clippings are contained in some 15,000
folders (certain subjects are large enough to require
multiple folders which are arranged in date order).
Each can contain up to about 100 clippings ranging in
size from just a few column centimetres to full-page
feature articles. The collection runs from 1927 to
1977 and the clippings themselves are contained in
30 filing cabinets on the 2nd floor of Central.

10. Here’s the search screen for the clipping database…
And here’s the result on a search on the term “Karori”. Note how the subjects are
broken down into primary, secondary and tertiary headings.
The two folders of clippings on the Municipal–Suburbs–Karori
result means a substantial number of clippings must have
been collected. These will be arranged by year (eg, [1945 –
1969], then [1970 – 1977] .

11. Here’s a selection of external history related databases.
All of these should be available from “free internet” PC’s in any library
• The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (www.nzetc.org )
• Papers Past (paperspast.natlib.govt.nz )
• The A to J’s Online (atojs.natlib.govt.nz )
• NZ History Online (www.nzhistory.net.nz )
• Te Ara (The Encyclopedia of New Zealand) (www.teara.govt.nz)
•Archives New Zealand / Archway (archives.govt.nz)
• Matapihi (www.matapihi.org.nz)

12. The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre
(www.nzetc.org )
The NZETC is the largest collection of out-of-
copyright digitised New Zealand books
available on-line. It covers a vast array of
material including early NZ novels, history
books, the entire Official History of NZ in the
Second World War and various journals. These
can be key-word searched or “browsed”
according to subject
When a resource has been located, it can either be browsed online or
the entire work can be downloaded as an ePUB file and read on an
eReader (excluding Kindle) or on a computer using suitable free reading
software. Wellington City Libraries worked in collaboration with the
NZETC who digitised our copies of the NZ Railways Magazine and the
Cyclopedia of New Zealand. This last resource (a late-19th / early 20th
Century reference guide to NZ government, society and economy) has
since become one of the most popular works in the NZETC collection due
to its usefulness in researching family history.

13. Papers Past
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
First launched by the National Library of New
Zealand in 2001, Papers Past revolutionised
the study of local history and genealogy
when full-text searching was introduced in
2009. This enables simple keyword searching
of over 2 million pages of vintage New
Zealand newspapers. Wellington news and
events are particularly well covered as the
Evening Post currently has the widest date-range coverage of any New Zealand newspaper on
Papers Past (1865 to 1945). Other Wellington based newspapers include the NZ Colonist (1842
– 1843), the NZ Spectator (1844 – 1865) and one of the most popular weekly newspapers of
the early 20th Century, the satirical Freelance (1900 – 1909). “Exact
phrase” searching is often necessary to reduce the number of “hits” as an “all of your words”
search will pick up any occurrence of a word across an entire page. Once an item of interest
has been found, this can be read on-line or the entire page can be downloaded as a PDF or as
a high-resolution PNG file which can be printed up to its original size without loss of quality
(i.e. up to broadsheet size).

14. The A to J’s Online
atojs.natlib.govt.nz
The Appendix to the Journals of the
House of Representatives (more
commonly called the A to J’s) is a
remarkable source of “official”
history which until relatively recently
was largely ignored by amateur
historians and genealogists. This
changed in 2010 when the first 20
years of A to J’s (1860’s and 1870’s)
became available online.
This date-range has since been expanded up to 1914 and is likely to extend further in the
near future. The collection is a collaborative effort between the Office of the Clerk of the
House and the National Library (hence the similarity of the search screen with Papers Past).
The A to J’s are a reprint of all papers and reports “tabled” in Parliament. This includes
annual reports from departments and ministries, special reports, petitions, commissions of
enquiry reports and much more. They are a rich source of family history as they will include
staff lists and salaries of teachers, nurses, engine drivers and many other professions, annual
returns from farmers including acreage and stock numbers, plus many reports and
despatches relating to “Native Affairs” and New Zealand’s interests in the Pacific.

15. NZ History Online
www.nzhistory.net.nz
NZ History Online (aka “NZ
History.net”) was the first major
website to be launched by the Ministry
of Culture and Heritage. It is made up
of a collection of on-line “essays”
which are broadly divided into three
sections: Society & Culture, Politics
and Government and War & Society. It
is an excellent classroom resource for
students up to NCEA level 3. All of the
subject areas come with references
and citations which will enable older
students top seek out more detailed
information if required.
Selected feature topics often reflect current events, anniversary celebrations and the NCEA
history syllabus.

16. Te Ara (incorporating the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
www.teara.govt.nz
Another major website from the Ministry
of Culture and Heritage is Te Ara. Also
known as the Encyclopedia of New
Zealand, this website was “seeded” with
an electronic re-print of the original
Encyclopedia of New Zealand first
published in 1966. The website makes
good use of additional multi-media
material with plenty of illustrations, audio
and video recordings. Incorporated into
the site is the Dictionary of New Zealand
Biography which was originally published
as a five volume set. Te Ara also features
an extensive use of Te Reo including
detailed biographies and genealogy of
many important Maori figures.

17. Archives New Zealand “Archway”
archives.govt.nz
Archway is an index database to the vast collection of files held by Archives New Zealand
which are spread over their three main branches (Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch).
While this is an index-only, the results of a search can often give valuable information
relating to family history including pre-WWII military records (many of these are available
as complete scans), probate information (relating to the execution of wills), coroners
reports, immigration, divorce records and
much more. Any files which look
particularly interesting can be ordered for
further investigation as long as no access
restrictions are in place.
The best way to access Archway is to visit
the Archives NZ website and click on the
tab located on the top-right corner of
their homepage

18. This takes you to the “simple” search
screen which is generally enough for
a majority of searches. Advanced
searches will allow you to narrow
down the areas of government which
may have been responsible for
creating the records. Here we are
executing a simple search on the
name “Norman Collis”
The preliminary results indicate four records
itemised down to an individual name. Clicking “go”
takes you full results which indicate that Norman
Lawrence Collis divorced (and thus married) three
times.

19. Matapihi
www.matapihi.org.nz
Matapihi is a “federated search”
facility provided by the National
Library of NZ. In one quick search it
quickly retrieves and compiles
results from multiple institutions
including the National Library, Te
Papa, the heritage collections of
Auckland City Libraries and the
Wairarapa Archive. It is particularly
useful when searching for heritage
images. Clicking on a result will
automatically take you to the
record on the website of the
holding institution.

20. And finally…
Here’s a small selection of additional websites which can often be very useful when
conducting historic research
The NZ Yearbook Collection (online access to all yearbooks back to 1893)
www.stats.govt.nz/yearbooks
General NZ Statistics (including census information)
www.statistics.govt.nz
Current NZ Legislation
www.legislation.govt.nz
NZ Statutes as enacted (i.e. the original forms of Acts which have since been repealed or
amended)
www.nzlii.org/nz/legis/hist_act/