Wellington City Libraries

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Ngā pātengi raraunga o Aotearoa me Te Whanganui-a-Tara Aotearoa NZ & Wellington databases

These are searchable online indexes relating to our vertical file collections — filing cabinets of newspaper and magazine clippings maintained and organised into subject folders over many years before the availability of full-text database searching.

These indexes provide subject access to these publications for time periods where no other indexing or searching is available.

Collection access note — contact us

Because of the closure of the Central Library, much of the physical collection these indexes apply to is in offsite storage with limited access. If you find a reference that you'd like to access, please email us and we'll do our best to provide access:

Email enquiries@wcl.govt.nz

However, although the physical collection these indexes provide access to is less available, the online index search tool (link below) can be a useful tool for locating article content in the time period of 1940 to the late 1980s. For searching outside of this time period, we refer you to the Wellington Newspapers Guide below.

See also — Wellington Newspapers Guide

Please also make sure to check out our Wellington Newspapers guide for other ways of accessing Wellington historical newspaper content.

Wellington Newspapers Guide

New Zealand Local History Indexes

This resource encompasses a number of separate indexes (details below). You can search across these resources or search them separately at the link below.

(Find full details of all the collections included further below.)

Search our Local History Indexes

Wellington Local History Clippings

Primarily based around a collection of newspaper articles, dating back to the 1940s when the clipping and indexing of local newspapers first began at the Libraries. It covers a vast number of topics relating to the history and development of Wellington City and the surrounding region.

The complete article can be viewed by either requesting the listed WVF subject file (see Central Library Collection access note below), or by accessing a microfilmed copy of the original newspaper.

Evening Post Clippings, 1927-1977

The Evening Post Clippings Collection contains several hundred thousand newspaper clippings collected between 1927 and 1977. It was originally assembled and maintained by Evening Post library staff as a reference collection by newspaper journalists and editors. The collection is primarily New Zealand focused (with Wellington featuring prominently), though major world events such as World War II and the Apollo moon landings are also covered. Most of the clippings were taken from the Evening Post itself, though other material is also present in the collection.

Following the merger of The Dominion and The Evening Post, the collection was donated to Wellington City Libraries by The Dominion Post in 2003. The collection is now housed in 30 filing cabinets in offsite storage (see Central Library Collection access note below).

The collection has a major advantage over using microfilm in that rather than following the linear date arrangement of a newspaper, it is divided into nearly 8000 subject headings. These are contained within some 15000 individually labelled envelopes. This arrangement means library users can now research events and incidents over a 50 year period without knowing the exact date of when they occurred - an important factor when researching news events which pre-date the age of electronic indexing and on-line searching.

Māori Clippings

This comprises both a collection of early newspaper and magazine clippings collected by Mr T.F. Grey, and also collection of articles on Māori people covering the years 1930 to the present day, many of them taken from the Dominion and Evening Post newspapers.

Rohe/iwi mentioned include: Te Ati Awa, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Tuwharetoa, Mataatua.

New Zealand Artists' Index

This index is a guide to book and journal articles of reasonable length held in Wellington City Libraries on New Zealand artists. At present that means mainly painters, photographers, sculptors, and mixed media and installation artists, but as the database is expanded craft artists, jewellers, potters and architects will gradually be included.

Search the NZ Artists' Index

Heritage Links (Local History)