About this Journal

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 28, 1 January 1995, Page 4

About this Journal

The first issue of the Turnbull Library Record is dated January 1940. Its publication was financed by The Friends of the Turnbull Library, founded the previous year. Members of the inaugural Friends Committee included the Professor of English at Victoria University College, I. A. Gordon, and Broadcasting’s Supervisor of Talks, Alan Mulgan. Much of the impetus for the production of the Record came from the Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library, C. R. H. Taylor, who, together with Assistant Librarian A. G. Bagnall, appears to have been primarily responsible for the production of the first issue. To quote from its Introduction:

This publication has been brought into being through the interest and practical help of a number of friends of the library in New Zealand and overseas. It will aim to do for the library what neither a catalogue nor a guide book generally does. Thus it will be the vehicle for, on the one hand, more precise particulars of books, manuscripts and other records, and on the other, the publication of short texts of importance to the research worker in several fields.

This ‘mission statement’ remains substantially true of the Record today. The journal publishes research based on the collections of the Library, and also work in the fields in which the Library has research interests. This latest issue of the Record continues to pursue the goals laid down in 1940.

About this Issue

This issue of the Turnbull Library Record , celebrating the Alexander Turnbull Library’s 75th anniversary, bears witness to the many kinds of enquiry into New Zealand’s cultural history which the collections of the Library make possible. It includes Dr Michael Bassett’s 1995 Founder Lecture to the Friends, edited slightly for publication. Phil Parkinson’s article on the Library’s Printed Maori Collection, the history of printing in Maori, and the orthography of printed Maori is of especial significance in He Taonga Te Reo/Maori Language Year. Other articles cover the Wentworth-Jones land purchase deeds of 1840 and the moko of the Maori chiefs who signed; Alfred Hill’s cantata Hinemoa; and the surprising amount of information to be gleaned from the Crew List of an 1830 s whaling voyage to the South Pacific. Details of accessions to the Library, notes on the Library’s role in research, and a list of donors to the Library are also included.