Historic records online

HISTORIC minute books, correspondence files, electoral rolls and financial records are among more than 12,000 Manawatu District Council items successfully added to the Archives Central online database.

The recently-listed items span more than 135 years and are the records of various road boards, county councils, town boards and borough council that eventually merged to become the MDC.

Among those previous councils was the Manawatu County Council, which was created in 1876 and originally covered all of the present-day Manawatu District. Its archives include a complete set of minute books from 1877 to 1988 and, along with letter books from 1877 to 1904, are a valuable early record of the district.

The new items join the records of the Palmerston North City, Wanganui District, Horizons Regional and Tararua District Councils, which are already on the database - www.archivescentral.org.nz.

Work is now underway to catalogue items from Rangitikei District Council, while a start on the Horowhenua District Council’s archived records begins in the next 12 months.

Launched late last year by Nathan Guy, Minister for Archives New Zealand, Archives Central is a first for New Zealand – a single database cataloguing the archives of seven councils within the Horizons region.

Mr Guy praised the ethos behind the project, a shared service managed by MW-LASS Ltd, which improved efficiency and reduced costs to each individual council, while allowing them to meet the requirements of the Public Records Act.

“It is a great example of local authorities working together proactively and cooperatively on a project of national significance,” he said.

Project Archivist Michael Biggs said the MDC records would further increase the level of public interest in the website, which now listed nearly 100,000 items.

Mr Biggs said the Archives Central project also encompassed storage of the physical records of Horowhenua, Manawatu, Tararua, Rangitikei and Horizons in a new facility situated in Feilding.

This would be completed mid-2012 and provide a single location for viewing the tens of thousands of records held in those councils’ collections.