“I found one little gem that was real valuable information for us and really only meant something for people that came from [xxxxx] Marae. I found it in a book at the Turnball Library…. I found the explanation for the name of our marae there…. Now I wouldn’t have known that if that library wasn’t there and there wasn’t anyone at home that could have told me that. There is nobody left on our marae to tell me that. There are a few of our kaumātua that are still alive. But there are not so many. They are very, very few. We can count them on one hand. That’s why that information to me is really, really important….many of my children, our mokopuna don’t know their own history, and we don’t have easy access to that knowledge because we haven’t got kaumātua left who know it all and can teach us. We are trying very hard to recapture what we have left. It’s really important, that information.”

• Wellington, p. 13.

Szekely, C. (1997). Te ara tika: Guiding voices: Māori opinion on libraries and information needs. New Zealand Library and Information Association and Te Rōpū Whakahau, Wellington : New Zealand.