In December last year the Connexional Office approved a request for funding to cover the employment of a specialist conservator on a contract basis for the remedial treatment, context-checking, and boxing of the approximately 35 linear metres of naked volumes transferred into the care of the Christchurch Methodist Archives from the former Auckland Methodist Archives when it closed several years ago. In January the work was completed.

These volumes included Parish Minute Books, Circuit Schedules, and similarly historically valuable information dating from the mid-19th century onwards, from parishes throughout the North Island. The archives were at threat of further physical degradation should they have been left in their former state: loose on the repository shelves with no discernible logical order and inadequately listed, if listed at all. 

The sudden influx of an enormous amount of material at the time the Auckland Archives closed, combined with the Christchurch Methodist Archives’ continued remediation following the Christchurch earthquakes, and the urgent information needs of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, meant that the former archivist and her team of volunteers did not have the capacity to undertake this work when the material arrived in Ōtautahi.

Stephen Doig (my brother, former conservator of Invercargill City Libraries and Archives) was engaged to undertake this project over his Christmas holidays from his day job as a teacher aide at Hagley High School and spent 10 full days at Archives in Christchurch in January, completing the work to a very high standard, as seen from the before and after pictures.

We made several intriguing finds while examining the volumes together. Perhaps most poignantly, given the current political climate in Aotearoa, a parish minute book entry from Auckland detailing with pride David Lange’s 1984 landslide electoral victory, including a clipping of a newspaper article in which Lange stated that his election as PM meant that “ordinary people don’t have to live in fear anymore…[they] are not at risk of having their living standards attacked, while people who don’t need it get a lot more than they need.”

These precious volumes are now boxed appropriately. Any loose leaves or items found within the volumes have been encapsulated and carefully attached to the volumes in the correct places. Paper tears and fractured spines have been mended and new volume markers with corrected contextual details have been made for each of the volumes.

Once I have checked and amended the holdings listings or listed the volumes for the first time, I will item code them, label the boxes they are now housed in and record the details using our new metadata template. The items will then be tagged for digitisation and future upload to our new Recollect website where appropriate (more about this in a future Touchstone article), and the originals allowed a secure and dignified retirement.

I am thankful to the Connexional Office for investing in professional conservation services and equipment for this important series of archives, and to Stephen for his exemplary and diligent work and lovely company throughout January.