Hawke’s Bay to get a digital archive

Hastings District Councillors voted today, Thursday, to allow the establishment of a regional digital archive at Stoneycroft, an historic house prominent on the expressway between Hastings and Napier.

The archive will be established by the Community Foundation Hawke’s Bay, which includes in its successes in recent weeks important contributions to the Pekapeka wetlands restoration scheme also a $17,000 appeal which has brought Samoan tsunami victims to New Zealand to work to help restore their shattered village at home.

Stoneycroft was built in 1874. Both the homestead and the magnificent trees in the grounds

are protected by heritage orders and the parkland is to be used as a green area serving the adjacent Lyndhurst subdivision.

The Hawke’s Bay Woodturners’ Guild was also given permission to develop outbuildings on the site. The woodworkers propose clubrooms and ancilliary tutoring classes and a small shop and gallery.

The digital library will have state-of-the art capture studios upstairs which will scan documents, photographs, pictures and slides for posterity; other equipment will salvage 8mm and 16mm film, while alongside will be a fully-equipped soundproof storybooth for recording oral history. Downstairs will be public access and viewing galleries.

The digital library will be administered by a board appointed from across Hawke’s Bay.
“ . . . it does have the potential to create a digital archive hub and research library of significance in the Hawke’s Bay East Coast area,” said the council officers’ report to the works committee today.

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