Delving deep into the basements of New Zealand's national archives
Tuesday, 19 January 2021
Deep in basements beneath Mulgrave St, archivist Shaun McGuire winches a cog that opens towering rows of what are known as stacks – giant shelving units weighing as much as buses and holding any type of archive you can imagine.
The basements are filled with these units after a 1952 blaze at a Dixon St office saw a treasure trove of government archives incinerated. Back then, archives were erratically stored around the city, and the inferno led to the creation of a national archive to safeguard the country’s records.
Now, holdings are organised by which agency created the record, rather than what they’re about. Many are only accessible by scaffold ladder and can be requested for viewing in reading rooms.
Across the entire collections of both Archives and the National Library, physical records total more than 271 kilometres – a number that’s constantly growing through transfers of records from public sector organisations, Alexander Turnbull Library donations and purchases.
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To ensure staff don’t get lost in the basements they have radios, with signposts everywhere. Stacks are organised numerically and alphabetically in long rows which go on in a labyrinthine manner.
Travelling further underground via elevator, we discover not the bones of lost archivists but a range of items donated by former Prime Minister Sir Walter Nash, who believed the material was not his, but New Zealand’s. Nash sent some 3000 boxes to Archives after his death in 1968.
Among the items are mystery invitations, luggage tags, vaccination forms, news media clippings, a seating arrangement for Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage’s funeral and various awards, including a golden medal from a Japanese boy scouts’ association.
There’s an ivory weapon gifted by the Malaysian government which has a loose handle, so McGuire uses blue latex gloves to touch it. Much of these items are extremely valuable, and staff are trusted to comply with code of conduct versus excessive overhead surveillance.
“Quite frankly, after you’ve been here doing work for two weeks, you’re not just going to start opening up things on the off-chance it’s interesting,” McGuire says.
Even if they were stolen, the items were not likely to sell because they’re one-of-a-kind, for example a first £1 note gifted to Nash during his tenure as finance minister, and various unique Māori taonga. The combined National Library and Archives collections are valued at more than $1.5 billion.
Leaving the soaring stacks and McGuire behind, and up a new elevator after passing through different rooms which smell of old select committee transcripts and legislation, Hannah Bremner, a senior archivist with Archives’ digitisation programme, stands at the ready.
Bremner helps digitise documents to Archives’ free online search tool Archway. There are two types of digitisation: reactive and proactive. Proactive is when archivists scope out their own digitisation plans, reactive is demand-based.
The idea is to improve discoverability and diversify access to holdings, but hard choices have to be made about what gets priority, given the amount of material. Sometimes choices align with mahi happening throughout government, for example documents relevant to New Zealand History becoming a compulsory subject, or the te reo revitalisation programme.
As two examples of the kinds of documents staff work to digitise, Bremner shows us Samoan Land Deeds and the diary-scrapbook of Harriet Gore Browne, wife of governor Thomas Browne.
The diary includes Hebrew writings and copies of translated waiata, letters scribed in cursive fonts and paintings of New Zealand landscapes and lacework which reflects Māori influence.
This type of archive is not one created by government, but connects to other archives created by the governor, hence providing context, as well as insight into the time period.
Archivists use different digitisation methods depending on the material. One new German-made overhead scanner staff are particularly excited about is the only one in the country of its type, able to zoom into unimaginably clear detail.
Digitisation is important as it means people don’t need to physically travel to Wellington then get an aide to trawl through stacks and find what they’re looking for, Bremner says. The idea is to give access to any person wanting the information, irrespective of whether they’re an historian.
In many cases, as well as democratising access, there’s a preservation need to digitise items. Something like Browne’s diary, in its fragile state, is difficult to issue out. After it’s digitised it will be retired from public access, save for special exemptions.
Wandering into the elevator once more and then out and through red lino-floored rooms past the digitisation offices lays the only film preservation lab in New Zealand.
It was relocated here from Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production in 2013, along with its lab staff. Together they process films to make preservation master copies, which can then eventually be digitised.
When films first come in from the vaults, they’re checked for robustness. Being run across a light bench, any splits are repaired with splicing tape. Films then head to the analyser room, where they’re checked they will go through the printer correctly.
A paper tape is laced up, run through a reader, exposed to light and then processed through various development chemicals and cleaning liquids held in giant vats before finally being wound. At the end of the process, films are inspected for scratches before the copy is finalised.
Most staffers work in the dark, and know machines are operating properly because they sound correct. At the moment, the lab is preserving films from the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, however the machine has a track record including all The Lord of the Rings films.
At the end of the lab, Kate Jorgensen, its team leader, says farewell. The elevator goes up one last time. We step out onto the pavement, conscious that hundreds of thousands of documents sit beneath us, waiting to be discovered.
Archives NZ has reading rooms in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Opening hours online.