Helping people research past
Looking back in time is a little easier in Te Puke with a new initiative to help people research the past.
Once a fortnight, Te Puke Library and Service Centre will hold a local history drop-in for people to access the archives held in the library.
Much of the historical information has been collected by Te Puke historian Christine Clement and includes information on local families, events and the history of the town.
“People have always been able to come in and look at it if they wanted to, but we wanted to formalise it,” says Western Bay of Plenty District Council’s community heritage services coordinator Sandra Haigh.
With the help of two local volunteers, Freda Woison and Sheryn Shadbolt, Sandra is now indexing the collection to make it more accessible to family historians and researchers.
“There are newspaper clippings, DVDS, recorded interviews, tickets, brochures, programmes and lots of photos, none of which is online,” she says.
“The mission is to index it and place the indexes online so people know what’s here — but they would still have to come in and see it.” People are also welcome to bring their own laptops or tablets and access Ancestry.com and Myheritage.com through the library’s database gateway. “People can drop in to do research, trace family, find out about events of the past such as the history of the A&P Show, or about the history of the kiwifruit industry — anything like that.”
The drop-in will be a two-way street, with Sandra keen to learn more about local history.
“The more information people can come in with the better,” she says.
Sandra says adding more information to the Western Bay Community Archive is a longterm goal. “We have to take baby steps, because this is all new, but there is a phenomenal amount of information out there.”
She says it is important to gather people’s stories and she would like to add to the oral histories already in the collection. She would also love to hear from anyone with self-published family histories.
The next drop-in is on February 27, 10am until 2pm.
People can drop in to do research, trace family, find out about events of the past such as the history of the A&P Show, or the history of the kiwifruit industry — anything like that.
—SANDRA HAIGH District Council community heritage services co-ordinator