National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa
National Librarian/Director
The National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa is headed by a Director who is also the National Librarian.
Advisory Bodies
Two advisory bodies established under the National Library Act 2003, advise the National Librarian and the Minister with Responsibility for the National Library:
- Library and Information Advisory Commission, Ngā Kaiwhakamārama i ngā Kohikohinga Kōrero
- Guardians Kaitiaki of the Alexander Turnbull Library
Alexander Turnbull Library
The Alexander Turnbull team develops and maintains a comprehensive collection of documents relating to New Zealand and its people. The Alexander Turnbull Library holds both published and unpublished collections.
Published collections of the Turnbull Library include books, magazines and journals, pamphlets, newspapers, maps, music, websites, and other items that are published.
The Turnbull Library's unpublished collections include original manuscripts, oral histories, photographs, paintings, drawings, prints, and cartoons, organised by format.
Staff in the Alexander Turnbull Library:
- build and manage comprehensive collections across all formats
- arrange and describe items in the unpublished collections
- provide access and research advice for the Turnbull Library collections
- produce the annual research publication, the Turnbull Library record.
Content Services
Content Services is responsible for the acquisition, description and processing of items for the National Library, Alexander Turnbull Library and Schools collections, and for content delivery services from the National Library's collections. Content Services is also responsible for:
- administration of New Zealand's Legal Deposit scheme, which requires two copies of every item published in New Zealand to be deposited with the National Library
- administration of the Public Lending Right to New Zealand Authors Scheme, which compensates authors for items held in New Zealand libraries
- administration of the New Zealand agencies for standard numbers for books and serials
- contributing to the international authority control programmes NACO and SACO
- contributing to the development of Māori Subject Headings.
Literacy, Learning and Public Programmes
Public Programmes
This team has been established to support the Library in creating new ways for all New Zealanders to access and interact with the Library's collections and services, creating a distinctive, innovative and important cultural heritage place and space, accessible to all - onsite, online, and on the road.
We do this through a national programme of public relations activities, events, exhibitions, displays, promotions, books launches and includes responsibility for the New Zealand Poet Laureate programmes.
Services to Schools
Services to Schools supports literacy and learning in all schools, supporting educators to develop young New Zealanders who are engaged and motivated readers, whith the skills and literacy to be confident and creative users of information and who are connected to their culture and heritage.
We do this by offering a range of services to educators. Curriculum Services have a collection of over 600,000 resources to support literacy and learning.
We also focus on designing and developing new programmes and services, exploring new ways of connecting with educators and responding to new trends and directions in literacy and learning.
National Digital Library
The National Digital Library (NDL) is tasked with developing services that provide digital access to New Zealand's heritage, connect New Zealand libraries with national and global knowledge networks and aid the collection and preservation of our born digital and digitised content. The NDL works to:
- enable the discovery, access, creation and reuse of digital content and knowledge
- manage and preserve digital content to ensure access is possible over time
- provide services to support the work of New Zealand libraries and related sectors
- develop and provide robust and trusted systems that underpin the operations of the National Library and its partners
- provide the technology infrastructure to support digital and online services for the National Library.
Recent initivatives include:
- Digital New Zealand - An initiative that is making New Zealand digital content easier to find, share, and use.
- Services to Schools website - Contains a rich range of resources as well as features that allow staff and clients to interact with each other.
- Papers Past - Makes over 1.6 million pages of historical New Zealand newspapers easy to search and read online.
- Find - National Digital Library's cross-collection search tool
- Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa - A nation-wide project that is enabling New Zealanders to tell our nation's stories through equitable access to the internet
