Images of Dunedin's past feature in online collection

Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena researcher services manager Lynn Benson and archivist David Murray are eager to showcase the newly expanded digital site. Photo: Simon Henderson

An expanded universe of images is adding depth to Dunedin’s Hocken Collections.

Researcher services manager Lynn Benson said a major upgrade of the online Hocken Snapshop site had added more than 17,000 images.

And unlike the original Hocken Snapshop site, which launched in 2010 with about 30,000 images but had not been updated since, the new site would enable newly digitised material to be added.

The original "Model-T Ford workhorse" Snapshop site had been useful for researchers but had only basic indexing, with little descriptive metadata, and the quality of the images was not as high as more recent databases, Ms Benson said.

Elizabeth Mary Hocken took this portrait of Mere Te Kaehe Karetai (Kāi Tahu whānui) in about 1889. Mere was the daughter of Korako and Oriwia Karetai of Otago Heads and granddaughter of Kāi Tahu chief Karetai, a signatory of the Treaty of Waitangi. Photo: Hocken Collections

"It was a complete one-off, so we have not added any content since then."

Now, a new contract with cloud-based collection management platform Recollect was helping the Hocken to add a wider variety of items, including paintings, posters, journals, film and audio files.

"Finally, after many years we got approval to do a complete upgrade of the site, " Ms Benson said.

From posters of student capping revues and architectural drawings to ice-cream box labels and racy newspaper headlines, the new digital collection provides many intriguing glimpses into the past.

A collection of posters printed to advertise the weekly headlines of the New Zealand Truth newspaper are some of the ephemera items in the expanded digital collection. Photo: Hocken Collections

An example is a collection of material by artist Colin McCahon which includes book cover designs, working drawings and sketches as well as high-quality scans of paintings.

A collection of taoka (or taonga) relating to Kāi Tahu whānui includes historical photographs of people and places.

And a collection of items relating to transport or waka includes ships, trains, trams and horse-drawn vehicles, in photographs, paintings and posters.

Archivist David Murray said people could explore the collection by topics such as buildings, businesses, or portraits.

Maxwell Bury’s designs for the University of Otago clocktower, drawn about 1877, are part of a collection of architectural drawings. Photo: Hocken Collections

Some of the recent items added to the digital collections are images from the internal engagement division of the University of Otago, which has a large number of portraits of staff.

A collection of glass lantern slides relating to World War 1 includes mortally wounded German soldiers in a trench, and ruins of an observation station.

Dunedin musicians and actors feature in a collection of images by photographer Nigel Yates, including shots of band The Verlaines, musician Shayne Carter, Martin Phillipps and The Chills, and Look Blue Go Purple.

Ms Benson said a key component of the expanded collection was that a significant proportion of the material was able to be used without any kind of cultural or copy restrictions.

A poster by Leslie Graham Gordon advertises the New Zealand & South Seas International Exhibition Dunedin of November 1925 to April 1926, showing "65 acres of grounds and buildings" on reclaimed land at Lake Logan, now Logan Park. Photo: Hocken Collections

"We are saying you can use them for anything, for publication, anything, without coming back to ask [the Hocken] for permission."

This was a "huge philosophical change" for the organisation, and enabled people to feel free to find new uses for the material as part of their creative projects.

"A lot of images have never been on the internet in any form before," Ms Benson said.

simon.henderson@thestar.co.nz