Fresh off another Ockhams nomination, here’s one of New Zealand’s foremost historians on the realities of research – and the end of a golden era at our national archive. It felt like I had finally reached the inner sanctum of New Zealand historians. In January 1993 I arrived in Wellington on a three-month contract researching … Read more
Librarian Rebecca Hastie with a crash course on the fraught task of “weeding”, the systematic removal of resources from a library collection. Writer and reviewer David Larsen wrote an article the other week conveying his immense displeasure and concern that the National Library is removing 600,000 books from its collection. David’s piece, along with the … Read more
The National Library says it is ‘making room for more New Zealand and Pacific stories’ and hopes the books it’s purging might ‘spark joy’ for other people. David Larsen considers it a whacking great clear-cutting. It would be irresponsible for me to tell you the National Library is about to burn six hundred thousand of … Read more