J.C. Beaglehole Room – Special Collections at the Victoria University of Wellington Library

Peter Franks

Peter Franks, Journalist, researcher, administrator & advocate
The Standard

Publisher: Wellington, N.Z. : New Zealand Worker Print. and Pub. Co., Ltd., 1935-1959.
Description: 25 v. : ill. ; 34-63 cm. Weekly. Various mistakes in numbering. Vol. 1, [no. 1] (Oct. 9, 1935)-v. 25, no. 50 (Dec. 16, 1959).

“The Beaglehole Room is one of the very few libraries in New Zealand which holds a complete set of the Standard (1935-1959) which was a weekly newspaper published in Wellington by the New Zealand Worker Printing and Publishing Company.
The Standard and its predecessors – the Maoriland Worker and the New Zealand Worker – were published by labour movement organisations for nearly 50 years. My talk will touch on the fascinating history of these newspapers as well as the way I have used the Standard in my research on trade unions and the Labour Party.”

Anthony Dreaver

Anthony Dreaver, Local historian
Papers of Ernest & Pearl Beaglehole

Series 6 Photographs associated with Otaki field work, 1941-1942.
77 black and white photographs.

“Anthony Dreaver, a former teacher, is a local historian with a special interest in the Kapiti/Horowhenua region. Wanting to find more about Ernest Beaglehole’s controversial book Some Modern Maoris he visited the Beaglehole Room and was shown a collection of stunning photographs taken at an Otaki marae.
In this talk he will show some examples and describe his search for a brilliant but elusive photographer.”

Sydney Shep

Dr Sydney J Shep, Senior Lecturer in Print & Book Culture::The Printer, Wai-te-ata Press
A book, a bookplate, and a binding

Oeuvres d’Horace [The Works of Horace], Paris, 1887.
Edition of 500; this one hors de commerce.
Bound by Zaehnsdorf, London.

“The JCBR recently acquired an exquisite copy of the works of Horace, printed by the celebrated Parisian typographer and art printer Claude Motterroz, bound by the famous London firm Zaehnsdorf, and owned by New Zealand’s pre-eminent typographer and printer, Robert Coupland Harding. This talk offers one example of how to build a ‘Legacy Library’ out of the tantalising shards of a collector’s life.”

Di Dickson

Di Dickson, Appraisal project archivist
Papers of Mary Boyd

Dates covered: ca.1944-2003. Extent: ca.16 linear metres. Reference: Accession 2010/113.

“Not only was Mary Boyd a staff member for 40 years in the History Department at Victoria University, she was also a leading historian in the fields of race relations in New Zealand and of Pacific History, she wrote an award-winning history of Hastings, and served on the Waitangi Tribunal for ten years researching the validity of Maori land claims. Her papers contain a wide variety of research material and ephemera and include personal correspondence with many other notable figures of the time. She was a voracious reader and a writer with strong views, and she ensured that her material was left to the J C Beaglehole Room so that it could be used by future students and researchers. To quote Hon. Justice Durie in his letter of thanks from the Tribunal in 1999:
I admire you greatly for your stamina, and persistence in pursuit of that which is just.  It is a privilege for us that your name can now be carved with pride in the annals of the Waitangi Tribunal.
Her name is now also carved with pride in the collections of the JC Beaglehole Room.”

Kathryn Parsons

Kathryn Parsons, New Zealand Collection Librarian, University of Waikato Library
‘Peter the Pilot’ albums

Sample title: Peter the Pilot’s album. 1948, Focus on fame. 
Contributor(s): Peter the Pilot ; Carr Advertising Studios Ltd.
Publisher: Auckland, [N.Z.] : Printed by Wilson & Horton Ltd., 1948.
Description: 1 v. (unpaged) : col. ill. ; 25 cm.
Notes: Cover title ; Album to hold 36 cards.
Call Number: DU408 .P478  (Waikato NZRare Books Collection)

“Peter the Pilot card albums – a journey involving porridge, photographs, propaganda and pursuit. Published by the Timaru Milling Company, three cards came with every purchase of Diamond cereal and children could send away for the free card album. I think that these albums are excellent examples of New Zealand ephemera from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. This session will explore their content, production and images.”

Piripi Whaanga

Piripi Whaanga, Postgraduate Student
‘Seek the seeds for the greatest good of all people’

Main Author: Szaszy, Mira.
Publisher: Dept. of Māori Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, 1993.
Description: 12, 11 p. : port. ; 25 cm.
Notes: “Te Whakapōtaetanga o ngā Tauira Māori Te 27 o ngā rā o Paenga-Whāwhā 1993”. “Maori Graduands’ Capping Ceremony 27 April 1993.”
Call Number: LG741 V6 S996 R (J C Beaglehole Room)

“Learning from the past is why I went to the Victoria University’s Beaglehole Room to read a kuia’s speech to Maori graduates in 1993. Miraka Szaszy told the young Maori students that the higher education encouraged by their elders from the turn of the twentieth century had departed from seeking the greatest good for all people. The social and cultural deprivation she saw had its roots in elitism where those educated failed to sacrifice something of themselves. She said a new Maori humanism was called for, to use Maori values in contemporary clothes. This is the thesis of my M.A. in Philosophy.”

Louise Menzies, Artist
Students of the Radiant Life

Louise Menzies

The Sutcliffe School of Radiant Living archives cover c1939-c1989 and consist of lecture recordings, publications, class notes and ephemera, and papers from the Wellington and  Invercargill Schools.

“Louise Menzies’s Letters to Students of the Radiant Life is a response to the School of Radiant Living, a mid-twentieth-century movement based in Havelock North that taught holistic philosophy, spirituality and physical health. Her installation includes a 16mm film, a textile banner and a book project, which find points of departure in archival material from the School held by Victoria University’s J. C. Beaglehole Room. Reimagining the School’s vision for a healthier alignment of mind and body, the work interprets this local example of non-traditional thinking about individual wellbeing in the modern era.”
Sir William Southgate, Conductor and composer
The Sanctity of the Original?

Sir William Southgate

Title: Symphony no. 2 in C.
Author: Lilburn, Douglas, 1915-2001
Publisher: 1951.
Description: 1 score (136 leaves) ; 28 x 43 cm. Notes: Reproduced from holograph.
Call Number: M1001 L728 S 2

“It is always an absorbing matter for consideration in dealing with original texts: is it the final word, to be treated as sacred and inviolable? Or is there justification for subsequent alteration or excision? In studying Douglas Lilburn’s Symphony No.2 for performance on August 28th 2010, I was compelled to deal with this issue. It is thanks to my being allowed access to the Beaglehole holograph of the original score that I was able to arrive at a decision – specific to this case, of course…”

John Ross

John Ross, Massey University
Early printing ornaments

Title: The ecclesiastical history [up to 870] of M. L’Abbe Fleury, with the chronology of M. Tillemont.
Author: Fleury, Claude, 1640-1723. Contributor: Le Nain de Tillemont, Louis-Sebastien, 1637-1698.
Publisher: London : Printed by T. Wood for James Crokatt, 1727-1732.
Description: 5 v. ; 27 cm. (4to)
Notes: Vols. 1-2, translated by H. Herbert, v.3-5, translated by G. Adams, published by W. Innys.
Callmark: BR143 F618 E

“The JCBR copy of Vol. I of Fleury’s Ecclesiastical history . . . (1727-32) has been of special value for my research because within its preliminaries sheets I found three ornaments used by the London printer Samuel Palmer (active 1717-32), about whom I have been working on a book-length study, now awaiting publication. If I had not had the chance to inspect this copy, here, I would have had no idea Palmer had contributed anything to this edition.
More generally, this edition is an exemplar for three book production modes much used in the 1720s: shared printing; publication in parts; and publication by subscription. I will speak about these modes, about some fishhooks in the use of ornament-evidence, and about how working with the late Don McKenzie led into the Palmer project.”

Heeni Collins

Heeni Collins, Ngati Raukawa, Researcher/writer
Demon or Hero?

Adventure in New Zealand, from 1839-1844 / by E. J. Wakefield, (London, 1845).  2 vols.
Callmark: Fildes 238-239
Book of the Maori chiefs / by Cowan, James, 1870-1943.
Publisher: Wellington, N.Z. : Texas Company (Australasia), [1933]. Description: [16] p. : col. ports. ; 26 cm.
Callmark: DU401 1930-9 Box18, 14

“Heeni looks at a range of literary sources, some of which can be found in the Beaglehole room, in relation to their portrayal of and attitude towards Te Rauparaha.  These include EJ Wakefield’s Adventure in New Zealand (1845), an early educational reader, a booklet sponsored by Texaco, and more recent books such as those by Patricia Burns and Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal. She has also written a book of her own – Ka Mate, Ka Ora – The Spirit of Te Rauparaha!, recently released.”

Catherine Falconer-Grey

Catherine Falconer-Gray, Postgraduate, History
Representing Maori

The New Zealanders illustrated / by George French Angas (1822-1886).
Publisher: London : Thomas M’Lean, 1847.
Description: [12] p., [60] leaves, 60 leaves of col. plates ; 55 cm.
Notes: Originally published in 10 pts. Added engraved t.p.: London : Published for the proprietor by Thomas McLean, 1846.
Callmark: Fildes 1770 or DU423.2 A581 N

“George French Angas – artist, naturalist and travel writer – arrived in New Zealand in 1844 and for six months travelled around the country, documenting ‘the Aboriginal Inhabitants.’  One of the outcomes of this journey was the publication of New Zealanders Illustrated. This lavish collection of coloured lithographs was a very expensive production and was aimed at the elite of British society.
Examining the ways that Angas was representing Maori in this work is an important part of understanding the colonial encounter in New Zealand.”

Suliana Vea

Suliana Vea, Va’aomanū Pasifika
Internship for PASI 428 

Preservation work on various collections including the Alan MacDiarmid collection, the Portfolios of Horace Fildes, a VUW student Tramping Club scrapbook, and digitisation of books and audiocassettes.

“I get to work with special materials that range from the 1800’s up til now, and it is very interesting to see what records are kept from those times and their significance to the people they belonged to.”
Asher Norris, Postgraduate
Assignment for ENGL 441 

Asher Norris

Accession 1974/06, from Koro Dewes: ‘Dance poetry etc. from the Mss Bk of Mrs Ngoi Pewhairangi, Te Hokowhitu-a-Tu Group of Te Whanau-a-Ruataupare (Ngāti Porou) at Tokomaru Bay’, ca. 1948-1960.

“In my research into Māori writing in English I’ve looked at quite a few different kinds of writing. Something that caught my eye in the archives was the scrapbook of the Te Hokowhitu-a-Tu Concert Party, a group Ngoi Pēwhairangi (the writer of ‘Poi E’) worked with. It’s filled with a rich variety of material with quite different sorts of writing filling up its pages. I’ve picked out a few gems to talk about that show how happenstance can be the source of the best discoveries.”

Paul Emsley, Audiovisual Librarian, Victoria University of Wellington
‘Learning object’ from 1987

Paul Emsley

Accesssion 2010/25, from AV Suite: ‘Audiotape titled ‘Introduction to the VUW Library’, n.d., and slide carousel containing images of VUW Library and staff’.

“Several months ago I found an old box containing about 80 colour slides taken in the library some time during the 1980’s … certainly pre-computer catalogue days. Serendipitously I also found an accompanying audio tape of a commentary that was clearly designed to go with the slides.
At the time this was “state of the art” AV (believe it or not). One projected the slides in a special carousel projector which had an audiotape cassette player built in (we still have some machines at AV). The slides would automatically advance each time an inaudible “beep” occurred at specific points on the tape.”

Jane Stafford

Mark Williams

Jane Stafford and Mark Williams, Associate Professors, School of English Film Theatre & Media Studies
Anthologising …

 “Mark and Jane have been compiling an anthology for Auckland University Press that covers all genres and periods of New Zealand Literature from contact in the 18th century to the present. They will discuss the scope, organisation and editing principles of the anthology.”

Elizabeth Caffin

Elizabeth Caffin, Former Director, Auckland University Press
Numbers

Title: Numbers. Wellington [N.Z.] : Numbers Magazine, [1954-1959?]
Description: v. ; 21 cm. Irregular, June 1955- Quarterly, July 1954-Nov. 1954.  Ceased with 10 = v. 3, no. 2 (Sept. 1959)? 1 = v. 1 (July 1954) –

“Elizabeth is writing a history of the New Zealand Literary Fund, a project she took over from the late Andrew Mason. She will explain how an unassuming little literary magazine suddenly attracted national attention in a controversy which prefigured the more celebrated row over the New Zealand Poetry Yearbook and raised some questions about state sponsorship of the arts in the postwar climate.”

Richard A. Sundt

Assoc. Prof. Richard A. Sundt, Art History, University of Oregon
‘Manutuke Te Mana o Turanga, 1973’

[Image of a carved panel belonging to a now–destroyed church at Manutuke]
From the archival series: ‘Photographic negatives and prints of marae and carvings, taken by M. D. King (University photographer) during trips with Maori Studies courses 1969-1973’. Photographs were taken with the permission of the people concerned, so long as they were for the purposes of education and research. Content information has been added by Bernie Kernot.
This image, and other resources, were used in research for: Whare Karakia : Māori church building, decoration and ritual in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1834-1863 / Richard A. Sundt (Auckland University Press, 2010).

“The Beaglehole Room provided me with access to specialized materials relating to the early history of the Anglican missions and of Rangiatea Church, Otaki. The research I carried out in this room in 1997 led me to expand my interest beyond the Otaki church, to the many others of similar type that were built all around the North Island in the 19th century,  even though in form and plan these structures were not viewed as appropriate houses of prayer by some Anglican clergy and lay persons.”

John Pratt

Prof. John Pratt, Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington
Various titles …

The long white cloud (Ao tea roa) / by William Pember Reeves. (London [England] : Horace Marshall, 1898. ) xv, 430 p., [24] leaves of plates : ill., maps (some folded) ; 22 cm. Notes: Includes index.
Sidney’s emigrant’s journal.  Contributors: Sidney, Samuel, 1813-1883; Sidney, John, b. 1821. (London : W.S. Orr, 1848-1850) Description: v. : map ; 34 cm. Vol. 1, no. 1 (5 Oct. 1848)- Ceased 1850.
A history of the Australasian colonies : … to the year 1893. Author: Jenks, Edward, 1861-1939. (Cambridge : University Press, 1895.) Description: xix, 352 p. : 2 folded col. maps.
State experiments in Australia & New Zealand . Author: Reeves, William Pember, 1857-1932. (London : Grant Richards, 1902.) Description: 2 v. maps ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
The New Zealand citizen; an elementary account of the citizen’s rights and duties and the work of government, by E.K. Mulgan … and Alan E. Mulgan. (Auckland, Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd. [1919]). Description: [Rev. ed.] 190 p. incl. front. illus., fold. map, col’d pl. 12mo.

John Pratt has been visiting Special Materials recently to use various resources, for example William Pember Reeves’ Land of the Long White Cloud. He comments that his talk ‘will probably be an overview of a number of contributions about what seems to be a little known area of NZ’s historiography – i.e. it was probably the world leader in welfare state development from the late 19th century to the early  1950s’.

Meghan Hughes

Meghan Hughes, Honours student, English
Robert Ingersoll in New Zealand

“The Mistakes of Moses” by Robert Ingersoll. Dunedin: J. Braithwaite [1879], callmark Stout 42/19; “Ingersoll’s Mistakes about Moses” by D. R. Dungan. Dunedin: Mackay, Braken, 1879, callmark Stout 42/22, and other examples from volumes 48 and 53 of the Pamphet Collection of Sir Robert Stout, 1844-1930.

The Stout Pamphlet Collection consists of 1828 pieces in 93 v. and includes pamphlets (with some duplicates) published between 1840 and 1919. The volumes are numbered 1 to 88, with nos. 3, 24 and 80 duplicated and additional volumes titled  ‘Rare’ and ‘Personal’. The printed catalogue published by the Library in 1987 includes 286 separately processed extra items.

“I am  interested by the hundreds of nineteenth-century political pamphlets represented in the Stout Pamphlet Collection, and particularly by the examples concerning Robert Ingersoll, America’s most famous atheist, and the campaign for the separation of Church and State in nineteenth-century New Zealand.”
Hazel Armstrong and Marie Russell, 2010 Working Women’s Seminar researchers
Dan Long Union Library posters

Hazel Armstrong

The Dan Long Union Library was originally housed in the PSA Library and was named for Dan Long, who was General Secretary of the New Zealand Public Service Association 1960-1976. The Library was donated to Victoria University of Wellington Library by the PSA in 1999 and two sections have been separated to Special Materials:
1) the Equal Pay Campaign Archive c1943-1985, and
2) c350 posters which were produced by various union and other groups, 1970s-1990s.

Marie Russell

“Using posters to educate, inform and organise workers has been an effective practice for many decades. When we were preparing for the Working Women’s Seminar in Wellington on May Day (1 May 2010) we looked through the fine collection of posters originally housed in the Dan Long Union Library. As well as displaying trade union posters on the walls at the seminar, Hazel used some of these in her presentation to illustrate the issues and concerns of the Working Women’s Charter, which was adopted by the Federation of Labour 30 years ago.”
Hazel Armstrong is a lawyer specialising in workplace, health and safety law. Marie Russell is a PhD student in Public Health at the University of Otago, Wellington. Both were part of the organising group for the Working Women’s Seminar.