The Lock-in is an annual event at the Auckland Research Centre, that allows family historians the opportunity to be locked into our research centre overnight to do their family history research, while being supported and assisted by staff and volunteers from the NZSG.

 

It was my first one and I have to say it was AWESOME! I got such a buzz out of it, and am buzzing still!

 

All-up, we had 60 people, including volunteers. We had researchers from all over the country: Wellington, Taupo, Northland, Tauranga etc.

 

We started with a welcome from team leader and local historian David Verran, who also remembered and paid tribute to my predecessor Karen Kalopulu, before handing over to me. I took care of the housekeeping, order of business and introduced our NZSG volunteers before handing over to my colleague Anahera Sadler. Anahera did a fabulous short mihi maioha after which I introduced our other staff members, lock-in veterans Bridget Simpson and Marie Hickey.

 

We had the traditional “Lock-In Class Photo” taken with staff, volunteers and researchers, with quite a few people wearing the new rebranded “Karen Kalopulu Family History Lock-in” T-shirts with pride.

 

Helping out this year were Geraldene O’Reilly, Robyn Williams, Malcolm McDonald, Viv Parker, Keith Vautier and Owen Ormsby.

 

It was the first time for Malcolm and Owen, but Geraldene’s sixth time, and staff and volunteers were all kept really busy throughout the night.

 

In a small departure from previous years, we had a one hour workshop on offer to those of Irish heritage, with Malcolm McDonald explaining and demonstrating how to use the Lands and Grantors Indexes to the Register of Deeds.

 

We have recently acquired these films on indefinite loan from the LDS, and Auckland Research Centre staff have already been through a training programme with Malcolm, so that we can assist researchers when they visit us.

 

There were numerous success stories through the evening, but two notable ones were of a 30-year genealogical brickwall that came tumbling down; and a young man new to family history research, who was assisted in tracing his family back to England 1841 via census records. Hopefully, he’ll now go off and use the clues the censuses give him, to verify births, deaths and marriages!

 

We had snacks and refreshments to keep us sustained, along with pizza at midnight, and quite a few people made it through to the end at 8am on Saturday morning.

 

Having had my first taste of a lock-in, I now can’t wait till next year’s!

 

Happy hunting all

Seonaid

"Massey's Cossacks" (many of them farmers or farm workers) were sworn in as "special constables" during the 1913 General Strike.

The New Zealand Government under Prime Minister William Massey used them (mounted on horseback and armed with batons) to protect strikebreakers working on the wharves at Auckland and Wellington.

Manukau Library has an interesting section on its website "Massey's South Auckland Cossacks".

In addition, Auckland City Libraries', "Index Auckland" which indexes material from a wide range of sources, includes the names of those serving in Auckland, which were listed in the "Camp Gazette" publication, giving name, initials and the district from which they came. 

The constables were not just from the Auckland region, as the places mentioned are from as far away as the Waikato and Northland.

Janelle Penney

As some of you will have noticed the home page of the library website has changed recently. This is to allow customers to focus on their chosen areas of interest. The idea is that by creating a web account, you can personalise the home page of the website with the links that you use most frequently. You can also contribute to the blogs and discussion groups with ease and access your library account information all at the same time!

There's a great wee tutorial that only takes a few minutes to watch that explains how to set up the account - having just done it I can vouch that it's very easy – it’ll only take you a few seconds.

http://www.aucklandcitylibraries.com/aboutthelibraries/help/Website-tutorials.aspx?fileid=2

After creating an account you can then use the tools or widgets - to personalise the home page. Do this by clicking on the wee spanner symbols on the grey boxes and where you can personalise you will see lists of possible options that you can select to have on the home page.

So for all of you family historians you may wish to add Kintalk as your blog of interest and start adding some comments! You can then adjust the Quick Links for your liking for example Family History eResources and Family History collections may be two you could consider adding. You may also want to add Heritage Special Collections eResources and Heritage Services and Collections as quick links. Others I'd recommend adding include Local History eResources, Local History Research and of course News and Newspapers allowing you quick access to  Papers Past, Australian Historic Newspapers and Nuipepa - Historic Maori newspapers.

You can also use the new titles function to see new books for any particular collection for example Family History - meaning you'll be kept up to date with new items in the collection as they arrive.

If the page is too busy for you, you can of course delete some of the widgets that you don't wish to use.

All of this will only take a few minutes to set up but once it's done it makes life lots easier and gives you access to the collections and items that you use most often from our website ultimately saving you lots of time!

And when you get fed up with the look of your web page you can go back and change the features making sure it always personal and relevant to you.

What a great new cool tool that will undoubtedly save you time and effort in searching for the things you love to use most frequently, leaving all the more time to track these elusive ancestors!