Research Information & Advice

What to do before you visit Archives New Zealand

If you wish to conduct research at Archives New Zealand there are several steps you should take to help prepare for your research.

Before visiting an Archives New Zealand office you should:

Consider your topic or subject of research. Are government records going to deal with your topic?
Consider which government office or offices may have dealt with the subject of your research. Who may have created records that are relevant to your research?
Consider which Archives New Zealand office may hold records from that government office. For instance if you are looking for court records from the Dunedin High Court these are likely to be held in Archives New Zealand's Dunedin Office.
Consider whether there are other sources of information on your topic. Some sources may be easier to locate, such as published information held in libraries.
Gather information on your specific topic. Your research will be improved by bringing as much information with you as you can, such as names of people you are interested in, dates of events and places of events.

Should you wish to pre-order items before you visit, please send us the full archives reference/s of the files by email, fax or post to the appropriate office. You can obtain the archives references by searching Archway . Also please provide your Reader Card number if you are already a registered reader, or supply us with your name, contact details and bring one form of identification when you visit. Please note we need to receive your order at least two full working days before your visit. If you wish to pre-order New Zealand Defence Force Personnel files we require at least five working days notice due to the nature of these records. There are limits on how many requests each office can handle in advance and this is generally five files.

What and Where

People can visit the four offices of Archives New Zealand to conduct research. Each office holds records from government offices located within the catchment area of its office.

Opening Hours are 9.00 am to 5.00 pm Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays at the Head Office in Wellington and 9:30 am to 5.00 pm Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays in the Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin Regional Offices.

Research is conducted in a Reading Room where archives can be viewed. Archives cannot be viewed outside of the Reading Rooms for preservation and security reasons.

Staff

Staff in the Reading Rooms assist researchers to register, consult the finding aids, request archives, arrange for copying of archives and provide advice on other useful sources of research. In addition, staff can provide information on how to handle archives, the reprographic services available and processes for requesting access to archives that have access restrictions and for requesting permission to publish or reproduce archives.

Researchers need to consult the finding aids to try to locate references to specific records that might be relevant to the topic of research. If references can be found then they need to request the relevant items, which will be retrieved from the stacks to be viewed in the Reading Room.

Some information about the holdings can be found in the Reference Guides, although these do not cover all the records that Archives New Zealand holds.

Time-consuming

Archival research is usually time consuming and requires application and perseverance. There are often frustrations, such as incomplete or missing records and records which do not contain the desired information. It is therefore sensible to allocate as much time as possible to undertake research. If you are working to a deadline, such as a publication date or assignment due date, you should begin researching well before this deadline.

Archives are arranged and described by provenance, which means that they are primarily found through identifying the creator or custodian of the records when they were in use by the government and scrutinising the lists of records transferred or controlled by those government offices.

You will be working with the many and varied recordkeeping systems of government offices. The records that we hold were created primarily for administrative purposes rather than for easy research and the arrangement and description of the records may not be intuitive.

Ask for help

The staff in the reading rooms are there to assist and advise you in your research. Do not hesitate to ask for help but please be aware that the staff cannot conduct your research for you.

Researchers can also use the Remote Reference Service to make enquiries remotely, although the amount of research that can be done on behalf of researchers through this service is limited. Remote Reference Service