UnlockThePast have chosen Central City Library, Auckland, to launch their History and Genealogy Cruise November 2011 - Scottish & Irish Theme that sets sail from Auckland to Sydney for 14 nights.

The pre-cruise one-day seminar is being held in the Whare Wananga, Level 2 of Central City Library on Saturday, 19 November, and is aimed at people who are unable to take part in the cruise.

We are very privileged to have Chris Paton as our guest keynote speaker on this day, and he will be giving three different presentations:

Seonaid

This year we have been expanding our Pacific Islands collections.

Recently we acquired birth, death and marriage (BDM) microfilms for Fiji. These include registers for Fijians, Indians and those from other nationalities.

The date range varies but the earliest is from 1871, up until 1989. Search in our classic catalogue using 3 FIJ BDM via the CALL NO field for more comprehensive details.

We also have the British Consul for Fiji and Tonga : BMD index, 1858-1873 in book form as well as Christine Liava'a's Persons born in the Pacific region included in the 1881 British census.

Another new purchase are Punaauia (Tahiti). Officier de l'etat civil 1852-1952 and Punaauia (Tahiti). Officier de l'etat civil 1898-1999 . These are the Civil registrations (births, acknowledgements of children, marriages, deaths) for Punaauia (Tahiti), French Polynesia, on microfilm from the 1850s to 1999.

For Niue, we have the register of baptisms from 1926-July 1947 and the register of church members, 1872-1912 (with additions 1928 & 1945).  We are also lucky enough to have a record of Niuean genealogies, which were created to establish claims of citizenship, land or property rights. There are lists of emigration and of European immigration. Try searching call no 3 NIU for more detail.

We also have BDMs for the Cook Islands from 1849 to 1975 (dependant on area of course) - search our catalogue under call no 3 COO BDM for more details - and for Tonga from the 1830s to the 1980s, including Enemy Aliens in Tonga 1916 (call no 3 TON BDM).

Our Samoan records include BDMs from the 1870s to 1993, European births from 1920 to 1962 and for about the same period Probates (call no 3 SAM BDM).

For more general family history information, try using call no 3 PAC to see what else we hold in our research centre for Pacific Island family history.

Guest contributor: Janelle Penney

Index Auckland came into being in the mid-1990s as the online version of an indexing effort that had been ongoing at the Auckland Library since the 1950s. Before Index Auckland there was the NZ Card Index, which as its name implies, consisted of tens of thousands of cards hand-written by librarians, pointing to useful references in a wide range of NZ magazines, newspapers and books. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, the images of those cards and the transcription of their contents, are now also available online, just like Index Auckland, through the Digital Library part of the Auckland Library's website.

 

Yeah, ok, I hear you ask. So where's the family history in all that? Well, I can assure you, that both those resources are worth checking for your family history research, and not just if you have Auckland family. Although there is a strong Auckland 'flavour' to the contents, there are references to people there from other parts of the country and for both the 19th and 20th century. To misquote Forrest Gump, the indexes are a bit like a box of chocolates - you never know what you'll get.

 

I would suggest a simple keyword search for checking the NZ Card Index. Index Auckland can be searched the same way but as you will see from the search panel, it offers other choices, too.

 

If you want to browse your family names of interest, go to the 'Subject' search box and click the 'Browse' button. In the lower middle part of the view that opens you will see the choices 'Terms list' and 'Words list' with the default choice given as 'Words'. Change that by clicking the 'Terms' button, then put your family surname of interest in the 'Find' box at the top and click 'Find'.

 

You will be presented with a shopping list of all the entries, in alphabetical order by personal name, of all the people with your family surname who have a descriptor entry in the index. You can browse up and down the list to look for possible hits. Selection is easy - just click to highlight the entry of interest, click 'Add' and then 'Close'. You will arrive back at the 'Search' box with your person's name neatly filed in the subject search field and all ready for you to click 'Search'. Good hunting!