New Zealand Web Archive | Te Pūranga Paetukutuku o Aotearoa
The New Zealand Web Archive is a collection of archived New Zealand and Pacific websites. Use the web archive to see a visual history of how websites have changed over time. The web archive is part of the Alexander Turnbull Library collections.
What’s the New Zealand Web Archive?
The New Zealand Web Archive | Te Pūranga Paetukutuku o Aotearoa (web archive) includes websites collected since 1999 and includes websites that are no longer online. It is a selected collection of websites about New Zealand and New Zealanders. We also include selected sites relating to the Pacific. There are now over 9,700 unique website titles and over 47,000 web instances in the archive.
Websites are archived for long-term preservation and research purposes. Most of the websites in the web archive are collected at regular intervals.
Access items in the New Zealand Web Archive
Use the National Library website to see all the items in the web archive. On the website
type in your search words
use the 'Type' filter on the right-hand side and select 'websites'.
select the item you are interested in
on the record page you can either:
click the 'online access' tab to see the oldest captured instance,or
scroll down the page to see all the harvested versions of the website.
National Library website search — Search is filtered to websites
New Zealand Web Archive Discovery platform
The National Library has been developing a new search tool for the New Zealand Web Archive Discovery platform that allows keyword/full-text searching within archived websites.
Currently, two collections from the Web Archive are available to search – The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (NZETC) and the New Zealand General Elections collections.
More collections will be added as the search tool is developed.
New Zealand Web Archive Discovery platform
Viewing an archived website
Archived websites don't have all the functionality that a live website would have.
You can get to most content on an archived website by following menu, page and date links. Sitemaps can also be a useful way to navigate around a site if menu links do not work.
Some forms of navigation do not function in archived websites. For example, search boxes generally require a search engine and this functionality cannot be captured in archived sites.
Any website content that requires you to be signed in, or registered to a particular site will generally not be archived. This is due to technical or legal reasons, or because it was located on an external site. This content can include forums, newsletters, social media and comments.
Other content like music and videos that are embedded files from external sites, for example, YouTube, Vimeo or Soundcloud, or content that needs an external media player are not archived, with the web harvest, but may be available elsewhere in the collection.
Archived websites require specialised viewers to access content and we are continually working to improve them. If you are experiencing difficulties viewing any content feel free to contact us.
What’s in the web archive collection?
See our list below for the strengths of the New Zealand Web Archives collection.
Government and politics
The government and politics collection is an archive of all central government, and crown entity websites. Also included are special event collections about the New Zealand general elections and local body elections. These events include candidate and party sites, lobby groups and political blogs. We aim to collect websites and blogs across the political spectrum.
New Zealand General Elections | Ngā Pōtitanga Whānui o Aotearoa — web archive collection
New Zealand Local Body Elections | Ngā Pōtitanga ā-Rohe o Aotearoa — web archive collection
Image from Frogblog, hopping along the corridors of power. A political blog from the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand]Image from Frogblog, the political blog of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand (blog no longer online under this title) Frogblog.
Māori
Archived websites by and for Māori are represented in all our selection areas. The focus is websites relating to Iwi/Hapū, treaty settlements, te reo Māori and te ao Māori.
Leonie Pihama: Kaupapa Māori as transformative indigenous analysis Leonie Pihama
Communities
Archived websites selected in the community subject area are rich in diversity, with a focus on national and local ethnic and community groups, support groups, and Pasifika. Also archived are websites and blogs reflecting a wide range of issues relating to gender issues and sexuality.
A blog where gay, lesbian, transgender, intersex and queer Asian people in New Zealand can share their stories. Queer Asian Stories from Aotearoa
Music
Music websites can be quite ephemeral by nature and this collection includes a wide range of sites, many which are no longer online. We archive music websites about New Zealand bands and musicians, labels, gig guides, forums, online magazines, festival sites and music clubs and societies.
The band Beastwars website homepage from the New Zealand Web Archive. Beastwars
Sport and recreation
The sport and recreation collection covers a wide range of websites from traditional sports and sporting-related bodies, clubs and associations. We also archive more obscure sport and recreation sites such as bathtub racing and an entire blog dedicated to Cricket Poetry!
A lot of the sites selected in the sport and recreation web archive collection relate to the regular event archiving we conduct for major sporting events, such as the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games or Rugby World Cups.
Bay of Islands Bathtub Racing Classic — Archived website
Donning the whites with Grace : the inner ramblings of a kiwi cricket tragic — Archived cricket blog
New Zealand Web Archive page from New Zealand Olympic, Commonwealth Games team website. Commonwealth Games
Arts and culture
The arts and culture collection is a representation of websites selected on the themes of arts, humanities and culture. Subjects covered include; art and design, graffiti and street art, performing arts and theatre, and literature, comics and publishing. The scope of the arts and culture web archive includes; artist/creator websites and blogs, criticism and review sites, forums, organisations and associations, conferences, symposiums, festivals and awards, plus museums, and galleries and performance spaces.
New Zealand Web Archive image from the Southland Stitchers embroidery arts group. Southland Stitchers
Environment
The environment collection includes websites about climate change, conservation, sustainability and natural disasters such as the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake. It also includes special digital collections on the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes and the post-Canterbury earthquakes recovery and rebuild.
Canterbury Earthquake — web archive collection
Canterbury Rebuild — web archive collection
New Zealand Web Archive image from the website of Generation Zero, a youth-led organisation founded in response to New Zealand’s climate change challenges. Generation Zero
Notable websites
There are websites in the collection that have become part of our internet history because they demonstrate how people have used the Internet in the past.
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection was developed by Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington Library in 2002 and comprises significant New Zealand and Pacific Island texts and materials held by Victoria University Library. A copy of the collection was archived by the National Library in 2023.
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection — New Zealand Web Archive search platform
Old Friends
Old Friends was a popular social networking site owned by Trade Me and is one of the early examples of a platform used to connect people looking for former school friends and workmates.
Old Friends — Archived website
Looking for old friends — blog post
Sciblogs
Sciblogs was a platform that ran for 13 years and hosted Aotearoa New Zealand’s best science blogs. It began when blogging was in its heyday. Sciblogs closed down in 2022 and a copy was archived in the National Library’s web archive collections.
Sciblogs — Archived website
Sciblogs — the end of an era — blog post
Home page of Old friends website.
Nominate a site
Suggest New Zealand or Pacific websites for the New Zealand Web Archive | Te Pūranga Paetukutuku o Aotearoa.
You are most welcome to nominate your own site, if you’re the copyright owner of a website published in the Pacific Islands, or a New Zealander living overseas publishing a website. This will assist us in the permissions process, as overseas websites are not covered by New Zealand legal deposit legislation.
Nominate a site for the New Zealand Web Archive
Contact us
Get in touch if you have any questions or are having difficulty viewing web archived content.
Email — web.archive@dia.govt.nz
More about web archiving
Useful links if you are interested in web archiving.
Internet Archive — a non-profit organisation building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.
International Internet Preservation Consortium — a global network of experts archiving the web for future generations.
Webmasters technical help — including design tips to make your website preservable.
Related content
Donating digital items
The Alexander Turnbull Library is actively seeking digital material to add to our collections. Find out what we are looking for and how to donate.