Winter in the Manawatu
In July, I travelled through the Manawatu, where I found a wealth of museum types and sizes within a single catchment area. The commitment and tenacity of the volunteers was inspiring, with most turning up on freezing winter days to spend time in often draughty, diffficult buildings. In Woodville, Pahiatua, Ashurst, Foxton and Feilding, the inside temperature of some museums rivalled that of a Dunedin student flat.
As I lost feeling in my extremities, I noticed that most volunteers were well-protected inside a polar fleece cocoon. They came well-prepared, and the physical conditions appeared to have no effect on their willingness to spend time helping visitors, caring for collections and planning for future improvements.
MAV Tech and The Coach House Museum in Feilding were exciting examples of well-planned redevelopment projects with the first completed, and the second awaiting further funding. All phases of the MAV Tech project had been well-conceived and thoroughly detailed, making it easy to visualise the transformation of a cold and draughty back-of-stage area into a high spec. collection store.
The Feilding & Districts Community Archive, recently opened as part of The Coach House Museum, was another example of the benefits of careful planning and policy formulation, well before the commencement of practical implementation. 
I also spent time in Whanganui, where I visited the city’s museum and art gallery, the Wairere Steamboat Museum, and the Wanganui Collegiate School museum. Again, the range of scale and subject focus was wide, but there appeared to be a strong relationship between the larger institutions and the smaller, single-focus museums, with regular contact and mutual assistance. Back home in Auckland, I visited several local museums including, for the first time, the NZ Rugby League Museum in Penrose and The Portage Ceramics Trust in West Auckland.
History Begins At Home
Since my first trip last November, I’ve noticed that many small museums have one staff member who seems to hold the bulk of information about the objects on display, and single-handedly conducts exhibition tours. Other staff and volunteers leave them to it, often remarking “it’s all in his head”, with a note of fondness and faint concern. It’s worth thinking about how you could record the knowledge and memories of key figures in your museum, before that information is lost – in much the same way that you might plan to record the life history of a close family member. There are several examples where a strong individual conceived and set up a museum, played a key role in guiding visitors and interpreting the collection, but later became unable to continue. This left the non-experts having to take over and “make do”, often without the help of collection records and with little historical information on the museum or its development.
Sound Advice
One way to ensure that you capture as much expert knowledge and information on your museum as possible, from those who know it best, is to turn to oral history. For those unfamiliar with the methodology and ethics of recording oral histories, the best place to look is the National Library Te Puna Mätauranga o Aotearoa website, on the Oral History Centre pages. There, you’ll find details on the training workshops offered in Wellington and, on occasion, elsewhere in the country.
There’s an Essentials course which covers both the ethical and practical aspects of oral history recording, and a follow-up course which covers recording in more detail.
The National Library website also has a downloadable Guide to Digital Recording written by resident Sound Conservator, Bronwyn Officer. This resource is packed full of practical information – it warns against the use of handheld dictaphones and encourages a move to digital recorders to achieve a higher quality result. The resource also specifies the standards that need to be achieved for preservation purposes, considering the time and effort the recording takes for both interviewer and interviewee, it seems only sensible to maximise the life of the recording in the same way that you would preserve other collection items. If you’re planning to purchase recording equipment, the Oral History Centre is happy to be contacted directly to advise on currently available models, and to help you make the best choice for your budget.
The National Oral History Association of New Zealand (NOHANZ) also has a useful website, which currently holds details of its upcoming conference “Using Oral History in Communities” to be held in Wellington in late October.
Don’t forget, too, that you can attach sound files to collection database records in the same way that you can attach photographs. For a collection such as The Portage Ceramics Trust, the addition of oral history interviews to Crown Lynn object records would add new perspectives (from designers, factory workers, salespeople), and provide valuable material for potential displays.
Funding
For museums searching for financial assistance to undertake oral history projects, the first port of call might again be the National Library website. The Library offers the Jack Ilott Oral History Education Operating Fund, which is currently unavailable for the duration of the Library building project. However, this resource seems well worth bookmarking, and the unexpected freeze may give you the perfect opportunity to plan your project well in advance.
For those museums fortunate enough to have historians as staff, volunteers or community members, the Australian Sesquicentennial Gift Trust Awards in Oral History, administered by the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, are another possible source of funds. A quick check of recent recipients shows that both Otaki and Tairawhiti Museums have received funding to record histories which now form part of the new exhibitions “Changing Faces of Te Horo” and “Watersheds: Nga Wai Pupu”.
If your museum is simply unable to obtain external funding, there is always the option of attracting secondary school or university students to undertake oral history projects as part of their course requirements. Involving students may also provide the additional spin-off of attracting new volunteers to other projects of benefit to the museum.
Julia Gresson, Museum Development Officer - North Island
juliag@tepapa.govt.nz, 029 601 0370