Hītori - History

Library resources for researching historical topics.

Crowds gather around to farewell New Zealand's last tram.

Discover our history resources

Recent booklist: Te Tiriti o Waitangi

The below booklist is an excellent place to start for learning about Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Explore stories about our local history

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  • Wellington’s Café Culture: the Visual Guide

    “Coffee’s done more for cities in the past 25 years than architecture’s done in the past 150.” (Sir Ian Athfield, 1940 – 2015)
  • New Zealand Railways and the Remutaka Deviation

    Photographs from the New Zealand Railways Department capture the modernisation of train routes in the Wellington region, with a focus on the Upper Hutt to Wairarapa connection.
  • Bringing History Into 2024: A Recap

    This year our heritage team have digitised and uploaded over 1500 unique items to our platform Wellington City Recollect, including posters, photographs, books, documents, maps and more!
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History eResources

Resources you have access to with your library card. Also included in this list are a number of freely available websites that can be accessed without a library card login.

Online history journals and magazines

We have a great range of online history resources, including reference sources, journals, magazines and much more.

The following are just a few of the history journals and magazines available online (in full text) through our databases.

If you are viewing this page outside a library, please login here first, then the links below will work for you.

History magazines in print

Here are links into the catalogue for just a few of our most popular history magazines:

Catalogue Search

Wellington's museums

Wellington's archives

Overseas history online

  • Spartacus Educational
    Mini-encyclopedias on historical subjects, designed for British schoolchildren.
  • Best of History Web Sites
    An award-winning American portal created for history teachers, students, and general history enthusiasts.
  • HyperHistory Online
    An expanding scientific project presenting 3,000 years of world history with an interactive combination of synchronoptic lifelines, timelines, and maps.