Pop Culture Preserved For Generations To Come

2 August 2002

Pop Culture Preserved For Generations To Come

A rare collection of Kiwi nostalgia is to be preserved at Auckland’s Central City Library so it can still be enjoyed by our great-grandchildren.

The Auckland Library Heritage Trust has won a $90,000 grant from the ASB Charitable Trust to preserve around 3400 issues of the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly on microfilm before they succumb to the ravages of time.

Auckland City Libraries owns the most comprehensive collection of this journal in the country – it is missing only the very first issue, which is being lent to them for the project by the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.

First printed in 1932, the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly captures the dramatic changes in our popular culture, ranging from the Second World War to the 1960s protest movement.

Auckland City Libraries heritage manager Theresa Graham says, “Its value is in reflecting the social history of New Zealand, and as time goes on, when you think of what was going on in the 1930s, it becomes even more important.”

Ms Graham says putting the collection onto microfilm will protect the fragile, yellowing pages from further handling, as well as enhancing public access.

The magazine was printed on fairly cheap, acidic paper due to the scarcity of this resource during the war years.

The library has received around $278,000 in total from the ASB Charitable Trust, with several other projects also given the green light. These include scanning some 550 real estate maps of early Auckland, digitising old photographs and putting two turn-of-the-century periodicals onto microfilm.

ENDS

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