Living history while documenting it

Documenting events of national significance

One of the most important roles of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa is to document our events of national significance. These are events that impact us as a nation and include protests and political events, natural disasters, and events relating to Māori and Pasifika culture.

Some of these events we can plan for, such as documenting our general elections. With other events, such as earthquakes, we mobilise as soon as it is safe to do so. For example, after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake the teams within the Library, being mostly based in Wellington, were able to come together quickly to start documenting the impact of this earthquake on the city of Christchurch, and its communities.

More recently, we have found ourselves documenting events while also personally experiencing them, the COVID-19 pandemic being one such example. Another example is the recent 2022 Wellington protests, where we found our building to be within the cordoned-off protest area and witnessed standoffs between police and protestors on our front steps.

This is all part-and-parcel of the work that we do. Our building is near Parliament and we often hear the sounds from protests on the parliamentary front lawn. The noise drifts up and across the street into our offices, which creates, some would say, a fitting atmosphere for us to document what is happening.

Adding to the nation’s documentary heritage

At the Library, we hold the documentary heritage — the photographs, oral histories, newspapers, manuscripts, paintings, and cartoons – of many of Aotearoa New Zealand’s protest and social movements. These include collections created by institutions and individuals that relate to the Women’s Suffrage Petition, the 1981 Springbok tour, the Nuclear-free and Anti-Vietnam War protests, and the Occupy movement.

Documenting these moments in our history helps us to understand where collective action has divided us or brought us together. Without the work of the Library to house, and archive, these national memories, much of this history would be lost.

Archiving ephemeral material

When protests and other events happen, in order to document them, we need to act quickly to collect, and archive, what is often very ephemeral material. For example, many of the signs, and placards, that carried the protestors’ messages from this most recent Wellington protest event have been disposed of in the clean-up process, but the Library curators are actively working to collect the remaining few.

Online communication channels

We have also moved quickly to collect online material for this event. Most of us, at some point, watched the live stream of news coverage, or viewed the wide-scale participation on social media, including from those in, or near, the event, but also from the thousands that contributed their thoughts and opinions from afar.

Online communication channels, in many ways, have shaped our experiences of this protest. Due to this, we are archiving tweets, podcasts, websites, and the Stuff news live stream, to help document this event.

But the hardest job is now ahead of us, as we take the time to analyse what has been collected and discuss how it should be archived. This review process is important, as we are increasingly collecting new media formats, such as social media, and live news broadcasts, and we need to ascertain if our existing collection practices still apply to this rapidly changing communication landscape.

Offline voices

We know that this event was also experienced by many people not posting on social media or in the news. That is why we will now also take the time to hear from, and archive, the experiences of the people whose voices cannot be found online, such as from local Wellingtonians.

Diversity of voices

In archiving this event, our role at the Library is to make sure that what we document is representative and includes a diversity of voices. In doing this, we can try to tell the whole story, and we hope that our work can, in a small way, help us to look back on this moment, and to help us move forward.