The NZ Registrations database is an index to nineteenth-century sources
for the history of printing and publishing in New Zealand:
Printing trade journals:
- New Zealand Press News and Typographical Circular, published 1876-1879 (cited in the database as NZPN);
- Colonial Printers' Register, 1879-1880 (cited as CPR);
- Griffin's Colonial Printers' Register, 1880-1881(cited as GCPR).
- General Post Office, Wellington, printed lists of publications registered as newspapers, 1883, 1884 and 1899 (cited as GPO).
Registrations under thePrinters
and Newspapers Registration Act, 1868, for the period 1869-1904: files
held in the Dunedin office of the National Archives are cited NADN;
all others are cited as COURT. Note that records for the provinces
of Southland and Westland have not been indexed (see Limitationsâ below).
To Search
Simply click on the magnifying glass icon in the upper right corner
of the left frame. To display found items in a table, select the pull-down
menu labelled 'View As' and choose 'Table'. When you have finished searching,
please click the 'Logout' button in the bottom of the left frame.
Fields in the database
Source contains the codes (NZPN, CPR, GCPR, GPO, NADN, COURT)
listed above. This field is searched by drop-down menu.
Date is the date
of publication of printed sources (NZPN, CPR, GCPR, GPO) or date of
lodgement of registration (NADN, COURT). Dates must be entered in day/month/year
order, and the year must be four digits. Thus 7 May 1886 is '7/5/1886'.
To search a range of dates, use the ellipsis symbol by clicking on the
'Symbols' button in the left window, e.g. '1/1/1880 ... 31/12/1880'.
Page is the page
number in a printed source, or file number in the registration files.
Region defines the
broad geographic area (name of provincial council) in which the person
or publication appears. Note that these are assigned according to the
boundaries current during the final editing of the database (1999-2000).
This field is searched by drop-down menu.
Place is the city
or town in which the person or publication appears. This field is searched
by drop-down menu.
Newspaper is the
title of the publication. This field is searched by drop-down menu.
Name is the name
of the person recorded.
Occupation is the
trade or profession of the person recorded. Note that for the trade
journals (NZPN, CPR, GCPR) this is often assumed from the context of
an article rather than explicitly stated. This field is searched by
drop-down menu of the most common job titles, but also allows the user
to enter a different term if desired.
Notes are used to
indicate the subject of an article in the trade journals, and to draw
attention to significant details.
Limitations
For technical reasons, access to the database is limited to 5 users
at a time. If you receive a 'busy' message, you may need to try again
later or the next day. We regret any inconvenience this causes. If the
problem persists, please contact the database administrator, Shef
Rogers.
The database is an amalgamation
of indexes created by different people, using different software, over
a long period of time. The records have been edited for consistency,
but incompatibilities and uncertainties will inevitably remain. Ross
Harvey and Nicola Frean commenced the indexing of printer and newspaper
registration files during the 1980s: at this time these files were all
held in Supreme Court offices in the various provincial centres; by
the end of the 1990s most had been transferred to regional branches
of the National Archives. (However, the Southland registration files
were located in late 2000 at the Supreme Court in Invercargill: these
records have yet to be indexed. The registration files for Westland
have not been located.) Ross Harvey and Ian Morrison indexed the trade
journals and GPO lists in the early 1990s. Ian Morrison indexed the
Otago registration files at the Dunedin office of the National Archives
in 2000. Research support for the Otago files was made possible by a
Marsden Fund Grant for Otago Print Culture study.
Other valuable sources for
the study of New Zealand print culture await systematic exploration.
For a comprehensive survey see Book & Print in New Zealand: A
Guide to Print Culture in Aotearoa, ed. Penny Griffith, Ross Harvey
& Penny Griffith (Wellington: VUP, 1997). For information on related
projects see the Humanities Society of New Zealand â History of Print
Culture in New Zealand Project website <http://www.humanz.co.nz/>,
and the Wai-te-Ata Press research page <http://www.vuw.ac.nz/wtapress/wairesearch.html>.
