Research Notes

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 26, Issue 1, 1 January 1993, Page 90

Research Notes

The National Library Research Fellow for 1993 is Rachel Barrowman, a Wellington historian who was a staff member with the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Her book A Popular Vision-, the Arts and the Lefi in New Zealand, 1930-1950, was published in 1991. Rachel’s research topic this year is on government funding for the arts, between 1940 and 1960.

From mid-June 1993 to mid-December 1993 the Library is acting as host to Abigail Van Slyck, Assistant Professor at the College of Architecture, University of Arizona, Tucson, U.S.A. Professor Van Slyck, who is a specialist in the history of American architecture, has been granted a Fulbright Research Scholarship to compare Carnegie libraries in New Zealand and the United States between 1900 and 1914. During these years, eighteen towns and cities in New Zealand were endowed with a new library building by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Not all the buildings have survived, but Professor Van Slyck has visited all locations in the course of her research.

The Library’s computerised collection management system for unpublished materials, tapuhi, has made further progress. TAPUHi was made available for public use at the beginning of June 1992 with just over 22,000 records in the Manuscripts and Archives part of the database. During the latter part of 1992, staff worked on developing the pictorial stage of the project. Inputting records for the Photographic Archive and Drawings and Prints collections began in March 1993 and on 22 September staff celebrated the 100,000 th tapuhi entry. Other New Zealand archive institutions showed considerable interest in tapuhi at the annual conference of the Archives and Records Association of New Zealand which was held at the National Library in August 1993. By the end of 1993 it is expected that the Library’s Conservation Unit will be recording its work on the system and that the introduction of an advanced ‘Windows’ software package will improve the user-friendliness of tapuhi for researchers.

In June 1993 the Library published a special, and final, edition of the National Register of Archives and Manuscripts. It was titled Archives ofWomens Organisations and gives information about 323 different archival collections held in different institutions throughout New Zealand. The guest editor was Ellen Ellis of the Preserving Ourstory Project, with help from Manuscripts and Archives Section staff. Ellens extensive field work was funded by a Lottery Board grant obtained through the support of the Womens Studies Association.

This years womens suffrage centennial celebrations generated a large number of major research projects, culminating in a series of important publications. Notable among them were Sandra Coney researching for Standing in the Sunshine-, Charlotte Macdonald for The Vote, the Pill and the Demon Drink-, Anne Else and Fiona McKergow for Women Together, Margaret Lovell-Smith for The Woman Question-, Judith Devaliant far Kate Sheppard-, Pat Sargison far Notable Women in New Zealand Health-, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography staff for The Suffragists-, Frances Porter and June Starke working on a compilation of womens letters for a publication,

and Tania Rei and Marie Tautari researching a history of the Maori Women’s Welfare League.

The exhibition About Women About Time: Stories from the Collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library’ , which ran from 2 July to 23 October 1993, and its programme of related events were well attended. The exhibition was curated by seven Library staff members and consisted of material from all of the Library’s collections, much of it never exhibited before. It was organised around a series of timeline panels and highlighted a diverse number of individual women, organisations, political campaigns and issues. The Turnbull Room illustrated the lives of women ‘Circa 1890’.

Staff members Sharon Dell and Robert Petre delivered papers promoting the Library’s collections at the 9th David Nichol Smith Seminar. The seminar was held in Auckland in August 1993, and attended by scholars in eighteenth century studies from throughout New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and the Pacific.

The exhibition ‘ Books Fatal to their Authors ’, curated by Robert Petre and Barbara Brownlie, proved popular with visitors, was well reviewed in several national publications and the international quarterly Bookways (USA), and was filmed for theTV3 arts programme‘The Edge’. It was on display in theTurnbull Room from March to June 1993.

‘Lydia’, an exhibition about Lydia Myrtle Williams was on display in the Library during September and October 1993. It then went on tour to Onehunga (at the request of descendants) from mid-October to mid-November 1993. It will go from there to the Hawkes Bay Museum until mid-February 1994. The black and white photographs in the exhibition were made from negatives held in the E. R. Williams Collection, and were taken by Lydias husband William Williams.

The exhibition ‘The Polynesianists: Early Ethnology in Aotearoa’ was curated by David Colquhoun, Curator of Manuscripts and Archives in the Library. It marked the centenary of the Polynesian Society and examined the early work of scholars such as Elsdon Best, Te Rangihiroa, and Stephenson Percy Smith. The texts, images and sound recordings were drawn from the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland City Art Gallery and Archive Maori and Pacific Music.

Roger Watkins, an expert in the field, has been contracted to develop the popular and rock music collections in the Archives of New Zealand music. He is working on recording oral histories, acquiring personal papers, and identifying gaps in the collection. People interviewed include Ray Columbus, Peter Posa, Phil Warren and Tommy Adderley, and the latter’s papers have been donated to the Library.