NZ State book collections 1856 to 2021

The Library, 1997

2015

As the recipient of the 2015 Friends of the Turnbull Research Grant, I was fortunate to spend a month in Wellington, researching at the Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL), which houses the world’s largest collection of material pertaining to Katherine Mansfield. I have been fortunate to visit the library before, but it was wonderful to be able to devote an extended period of time on the collection, following up leads and various avenues of enquiry.

2010

This thesis explores the collecting and exhibiting of colonial art (before 1908) by New Zealand's state institutions: the Colonial (later Dominion) Museum; the Alexander Turnbull Library; and the National Art Gallery. It recovers evidence of the provenance of works of art within the state collections and accounts for acquisitions in terms of the ideological interests they serve, interests which reflect the intellectual concerns of the key individuals and the historical and political circumstances within which they worked. It examines how works of art were displayed in the institutions themselves, and in other exhibitions, including international exhibitions, both locally and abroad, from 1865 to 1940. This allows for analysis of the 'use' to which colonial art was put by the state, while investigation of the related contemporary discourse provides evidence of its reception and interpretation by critics and audience. This study employs a variety of analytical strategies, including: the place of class in relation to the colonial art world; the aesthetics of 'space' and the practicalities of exhibition in the colonial period; the shifting ground of what constitutes 'art', in particular 'New Zealand art', in the period under study; and the fluctuating, often problematic, status of much colonial art as both 'information' and as 'art'. Consequently, while informed by international scholarship, this thesis needed to adapt models formed for the explanation of metropolitan museology to accommodate the unique nature of the colonial experience in New Zealand. It concludes that, in contrast to many European institutions, the state was largely content to use New Zealand's art as information-as illustration of the colony's natural wonders and resources-and that no real attempt to define a national art history was initiated until the centennial celebrations of 1940. Significantly, this thesis does not just consider the evolution of one state institution. Rather, it recognises that the histories of New Zealand's cultural institutions-Museum, Gallery and Library-require a consideration of their development in relation to one another. This reveals a history of interconnectedness that reflects the complexity of colonial culture, and which ironically prefigures the challenge posed by colonial art to the postmodern descendent of the Museum and Gallery-the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Museum International, 2000

The Australian Library Journal

This article, based on a paper delivered at the 1997 HOBA (History of the Book in Australia) conference, discusses the implications of the term 'history of the book in Australia'. Consideration focuses on official publications in Australia and the impact of the 1964 Report of the Erwin Joint Select Committee on Government and Parliamentary Publications. The place of official publications in the collections of major libraries and their value as items for international gift and exchange between libraries are discussed. Next, the role of public institutions is considered, especially that of the National Library of Australia's attempts to develop the 'national collection'. The idea of the Distributed National Collection is reviewed, and the need for clarity on what is understood by a 'national collection' is stressed. A case is stated for a non-parliamentary committee of inquiry into problems of acquisitions and resources now confronting Australian libraries generally and the National Library in particular. The article concludes by examining the future of the important nineteenth-century collections of the Australian parliamentary libraries. A note of caution is sounded against taking 'use' as the guiding criterion for deciding whether to sell off or discard books from these libraries.

1999

Most special occasions in Kosrae are marked with music and song to welcome and celebrate the event. In keeping with this tradition, our conference began with a beautiful musical opening and a special thanks is extended to the musicians,

A presentation of the 3500 books comprising the Seghers Collection, the Catholic Diocese Library initiated by Charles Seghers, second bishop of Victoria, in the 1860' and now on permanent loan at the University of Victoria Libraries.

Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2010

1996