Te Awamutu Museum is giving historic copies of the Te Awamutu Courier a second life by digitising the newspaper publications produced between 1936 and 1950.
The programme started in December 2020 after the Te Awamutu Museum successfully applied to the Collaborative Digitisation Programme for 2020/2021, which is run by the National Library of New Zealand: Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa and NZ Microfilm Services.
Museum director Anne Blyth said the papers were originally sent away in December 2020 where the team at New Zealand Microfilm Services in Auckland captured every single page of every edition from the 14 years.
“Each page is then added to a microfilm that is sent away to National Library in Wellington to be added page by page to Paperspast. It is a long process taking over a year to complete.”
The process is now finally completed and these years of the Te Awamutu Courier are more readily available on the website where they can be searched via word text.
Paperspast is a national database that delivers digitised full text New Zealand and Pacific newspapers, magazines, journals and books that are accessible online at paperspast.natlib.govt.nz.
“It is an incredibly handy tool for study and research on this nationally significant platform, the website allows people to have access to information at their fingertips from the comfort of their own home.”
“Paper archives can deteriorate overtime and become illegible, having the Courier digitised, it helps with the long term preservation of the original archives, meaning they can stay safely in storage while their material is accessed in more a user-friendly digital format.”
The TA Courier publications from 1936 to 1950 join the 1911 to 1935 editions of the Waipā Post that are already available online on Paperspast.
The Te Awamutu Museum is the oldest museum in the Waikato region with an extensive collection of 18,351 items that span centuries and includes taonga Māori and social history artefacts. Museum visiting hours, current exhibitions and digital collection are available at tamuseum.org.nz.
