The main focus for the year in the Archives has been the digitizing of the photos

Activities

1. The main focus for the year in the Archives has been the digitizing of the photos in A and B block. These photos are of the 1st XV, 1st XI cricket, hockey and football and the Prefects. The reason for this task is twofold: to have digital copies so that the photo can be replaced in the event of fire or earthquake; and secondly, these digitized photos will be available on the school website for old boys and others to research.

The task is time consuming. Pictures have to be taken down from the wall, scanned, processed and in approx. 1/3 of the pictures the frames needed to be repaired due to improper sealing, fish moth damage and moisture. Two 1st XV (1980 and 1981) pictures were damaged by a leak in the roof. Craig McKay(7781) kindly provided us with scans of his pictures and replacements have been put up. Similarly, for some reason or other, the 1961 cricket team was missing. Terry Kilmister (6063) came up with the scan for this team. Many thanks Craig and Terry. When originals have been unavailable, some ‘creativity’ has been used to make facsimiles using pics from Palmerstonians and Photoshop!)

To date, the following have been completed: Prefects, 1st XV, 1st XI cricket, football and hockey. Still to be done: basketball, athletics and some other codes. In addition, all the other photographs and art work around the school needs to be digitized.

2. The museum function of the office has seen the acquisition of some articles of clothing from old boys, as well as some science equipment from the S block renovation project.
A factor holding back the expansion of this role is the lack of space to store these items.

3. As part of my role as archivist, I have taught all the Year 9 classes for a period as part of their induction to the school. They are taught about the central place of the Memorial Gallery in the School’s culture and ethos. They also sign the book to indicate their part of the on-going tradition of the school. This lesson goes alongside the lesson taught by the Rector on other traditions and history of the school.

4. I have been co-opted onto the committee of the PN Heritage Trust to be the voice of schools with an eye on the coming compulsory New Zealand History curriculum. Local history organisations will be able to provide schools with readily accessible material. As a history and social sciences department, we have already created units of work using our school’s history and this experience will assist in the future.

5. Activities and projects for the future:

(i) Digitization: Completion of digitization of school photos and paintings. This should also include a visual record of all the school trophies.

(ii) Investigate the means and costing of digitizing the Palmerstonian magazine. This is quite a costly exercise as it has to be done professionally. If thought important enough, the Old Boys Association might wish to work on the costing of this exercise. Tim O’Connor(8185) at Auckland Grammar: “We have shifted archives into a digital platform so all registered old boys can access them, and communicate with other old boys. We did this as part of our build up to the 150th. Wellington College approached old boys and asked for volunteers to donate the cost of the digitisation of the school magazine for the years they were at school. We could look into this approach

(iii) Public Records Act 2005: Starting to tackle the huge amount of documentation relating the administration of the school in terms of the Public Records Act 2005, which lays out how long documents must be retained, which can be destroyed, which must be sent to National Archives after 7 years etc etc. Most of these documents relate to past financial records (stored in the Admin roof), staff records, disciplinary records

(iv) Digital archiving of current school material: Attention must be paid to the issue of archiving digital material and records of the school. The administration and management team generate a significant amount of material that is never hard copied – and this should be sorted, evaluated and significant material then archived.

(v) Updating electronic material: Connected to (iii) above, archives must roll over material stored on devices other than paper to the next generation of technology. (eg video and audio tapes need to be digitized as devices to play these become unavailable.)

(vi) Interviews: Oral and video interviews with old boys would be very valuable. We have some video interviews carried out by schoolboys of people such as Alan Cull (1937-1939), Pat Hickton (1936) and Jim Kelly (1938-1942). More of this sort of record should be created.

(vii) Repair work on the Memorial Gallery. The Old Boys Association has allocated funds to cover the cost of repair to the paneling, ceiling and front door of the Gallery. This work is to be carried out in 2021. In addition, Craig Hart (1965-1969) has agreed to pay for the repair some of the gold printing of the names of those killed in WWII.