Hastings District Libraries Archive Digitisation

In 2020, as a response to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on libraries across the country, The National Library led the NZ Libraries’ Partnership Programme to support the retention of librarians and library services throughout New Zealand. 

There were several focus areas within the programme, designed to help libraries engage with their various communities. One of these focus areas was content creation and curation of online NZ resources, focusing on local resources. Hastings District Council applied for funding to enable the community archives to be digitised. This would ensure a permanent digital copy of local history material was preserved for future generations.

The local history archives at Hastings District Libraries are largely made up of photographic materials and documents that have been donated by individuals or organisations to the libraries. There are also a few unusual items in the collection, such as embroidered tablecloths, trophies and a gold tooth.

Four staff were employed part time, for a temporary term, and work began in March 2021 to digitise the local history archives held at Hastings and Havelock North libraries. Because funding was available for a set period, starting immediately, the project had to be set up from scratch and the end format was unknown.

Firstly, the Hastings archives were physically moved from Hastings to Havelock North Library, where the purpose-built archive room is housed. Three A4 scanners were acquired, and digitisation could begin. For digitisation items are scanned to TIFF files, as this is a high quality, flexible image format. Photos are scanned at 1200dpi and documents at 400dpi (dots per inch) and, prior to using the Recollect platform, the meta data was stored in an Access database.

The funding for the initial digitisation programme finished in April 2022. Additional funding to extend the project was acquired and two staff continued working part-time on the digitisation until October 2022. During this time Recollect was chosen as the content management system that would be used for archiving purposes and the customer facing website, and staff received training using the Recollect platform.

When the project finished in October, most of the Havelock North archives were digitised, but there was still a significant amount of work to be done. Fortunately, a new permanent position was created and so the Community Archives Digital Coordinator role began. This is a full-time position that is currently being job-shared by two staff, who are working on the huge job that is creating and maintaining a Digital Archive and sharing these newly created digital archives on Hastings Recollect for the community to enjoy.

11 August 2023

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