Research Notes

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 22, Issue 2, 1 October 1989, Page 121

Research Notes

A pilot project for the proposed 1990 Historic Records Search was carried out in the Wairarapa during April and May this year by Diana Meads. She identified a variety of documents and photographs held in private hands, and by businesses and community organisations. This material reflects the rural nature of the district, including records of farms, saw mills and women’s institutions. It also extends to such disparate topics as Cook Islands administration in the 1920 s and gold mining in Collingwood in the 19305. The Turnbull Library was involved with the project, with Sharon Dell, Keeper of the Collections, providing liaison and advice. It is proposed that the information gathered will be entered on a database in the Library, from which a register will be produced. The New Zealand 1990 Commission is to decide on the feasibility of a nationwide historic records search in 1990.

Dr Nelson Wattie is the 1989 Fellow at the Stout Research Centre, Victoria University. He is working on New Zealand fiction prior to 1914, and has been using the Library daily since he arrived at the beginning of August. Professor Marvin Sundstrom, Department of Geography, University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, is currently working in the Library. He is in the preparatory stages of a work on Sir James Hector, and is investigating Hector’s contribution to New Zealand science.

Wharehuia Hemara, the Kaitiaki o nga Korero Maori librarian at the Turnbull, travelled to the United States and Canada on a James Cook Bicentennial Scholarship, funded by Blackwells Publishing, Oxford, from August 1988 to March 1989. He has completed a report on the different tribal archives he visited and their relevance to New Zealand. In 1988 the Manuscripts and Archives Section launched a programme to collect the papers of selected women writers. The first results of this drive are the papers of Fiona Kidman. The collection is a comprehensive one, including drafts of novels, short stories, scripts from radio and television plays, correspondence, newspaper clippings and tapes. Her involvement in the New Zealand Writers’ Guild, New Zealand Book Council and PEN are recorded. A feature of the collection is the tapes of interviews with New Zealand literary figures collected during her time working for the Concert Programme in the early 19705. These are the only remaining copies.

Grants have recently been made from the Endowment Trust’s funds to assist with the publication of Kate Buckland’s Rainbow and Tussocks (John Mclndoe, Dunedin), based on the Kate Buckland diaries; and Frances Porter’s biography of Jane Maria Atkinson, Born to New Zealand (Port Nicholson Press/Allen and Unwin, Wellington), based on the Richmond-Atkinson papers. Both collections are held in the Turnbull’s Manuscripts and Archives Section.

Mrs Joan Fitz Gerald of the English Department at the University of Rome has published some of the results of her research at the Turnbull in 1985 in an article, ‘lmages of the Self: Two Early New Zealand Autobiographies by John Logan Campbell and Frederick Edward Maning \ Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 23 (1988), 16-42. Mrs Fitz Gerald’s research was assisted by a grant from the Turnbull Library Research Endowment Fund. The Library has appointed Dr T. M. Reedy to edit Sir Apirana Ngata’s text for the fourth part of Nga Moteatea. The typescript of the text of the songs, with notes, was transferred to the Turnbull with the archival records of the Maori Purposes Fund Board several years ago. The editorial work is being supported by a grant from the 1990 Commission. Publication will take place late in 1990 under the joint imprint of the Turnbull and the Polynesian Society.

Van Deren and Joan Coke, two United States art historians, visited the Photographic Archive in August. They were interested in holdings of daguerreotypes and other early photographic processes, and were able to provide much valuable information on them. They were impressed by a daguerreotype by Antoine-Francoise-Jean Claudet of London, probably dating from the 1840 s, and fourteen early English caloptypes from the Glaisher collection. Joan Coke delivered a lecture in the auditorium on nineteenth century landscape photographers in the United States, and was able to study work by several of them in the collection. Van Deren is currently in New Zealand on a Fulbright scholarship.

The Library has recently acquired the letters, diaries and photograph albums of Thomas Berry Cusack Smith, British Consul to Samoa, 1890-1898. Cusack Smith was a more than competent amateur photographer and a witty and engaging correspondent. His papers and photographs complement each other to form a valuable record of the diplomatic, commercial and social activities of the British, Americans and Germans in late nineteenth century Samoa. His delightful images of amateur theatricals in Apia are of particular interest.

Henry Raine, Senior Cataloguer at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, arrived at the beginning of October to take up a year’s fellowship sponsored by the United States Information Service. He will be working in the Turnbull Library, editing the catalogue records for all books printed before 1801 which are held in New Zealand’s public collections. Copies of these records, in machine-readable form, were sent to the British Library in July. They will be added to the appropriate databases for early imprints, and then tapes of the New Zealand holdings will be loaded on to the New Zealand Bibliographic Network. Henry Raine’s work will provide multiple points of access to the records on NZBN.

The Library’s major exhibition in the National Library Gallery next year is being curated by Carol O’Biso, who was closely associated with the ‘Te Maori’ exhibition when it toured the United States. The exhibition will run from 23 November 1990 until 23 February 1991. It has a working title of ‘Toi Te Kupu’ People of the Treaty.

The 1989 edition of the Library’s catalogue of publications is now available, free of charge and post free, from Publications Sales, Alexander Turnbull Library, P. O. Box 12349, Wellington. The catalogue contains illustrations of all the prints still available (10 sets have completely sold out and some others are close to it) and details of books, pamphlets, cards, posters and maps. All publications are on sale at the National Library Shop and can be ordered through local booksellers or print shops.

The Charts and Coastal Views of Captain Cook’s Voyages, volume I, the Voyage of the Endeavour 1768-1771, edited by Andrew David and published by the Hakluyt Society at £IOO is now available from Stratford Books, 223 Dominion Road, Mt Eden, Auckland for S3OO +GST. Mrs Hobson’s Album was launched on 20 October 1989 at the old Government House in Auckland by the Govenor-General, Sir Paul Reeves, and is now available from bookshops at $54.95.