All posts by sjo158

Library Wide, MB Library

The history of UC libraries – smocks, card catalogues and much more!

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Macmillan Brown Library has created a display to kick off UC’s 150th year, looking at the history of libraries at UC.  It features some unique archival items such as an 1893 library borrower’s register, featuring books issued to undergrads Apirana Ngata and Ernest Rutherford.

There are so many wonderful photos in the archives of UC libraries at work – more than would fit in our display – so we are sharing them here. Above, the wooden card catalogue in all its glory in the late 1980s. Below, some 1960s students browsing the shelves in an entirely natural fashion…

One of our favourite items in the display is a genuine vintage librarian smock, seen in action here, behind the Circulation Desk, when the library was still on the town campus in the 1960s.

Back to the 1980s for this wide shot of PJH Level 2, complete with the obligatory “Quiet Please” sign and some chunky looking computer screens.

Finally, here are the 1950s Library staff on the roof of the Library in what is now the Arts Centre

and off on a jolly outing to the Canterbury Centennial Fun Fair in Hagley Park (maybe one we can re-create sometime??!!)

The UC library history display will be in the MB foyer for at least another week, so come and check it out (on lookout for it on social media soon)

Library Wide

Nothing says 1977 like.. ABBA

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While weeding some duplicate issues of the NZ Woman’s Weekly from MB shelves, we came across this gem from 1977. 

Imagine our horror when we opened the mag to read about Anna’s baby joy, only to find some naughty 1970’s student had cut out the photo! [shocked face emoji]

Happily,  MB staff could console themselves with colour pics of The Bay City Rollers [Who?? Kids- ask your parents]

The NZWW even encouraged cutting-out, with this dreamy poster of Eric, “for you to cut out and pin up”.

But BCRs were obviously a bit too teeny-bopper for 1977 students, and the pin-up remains intact. (If you’d like it for your wall, get in touch with MB front desk.)

Library Wide

100 years of radio in Aotearoa

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If you’re an RNZ listener you may have picked up that November 2021 marks 100 years since the start of radio broadcasts in Aotearoa.  I gave a presentation at the National Library in Wellington last Wednesday to mark this milestone and it was broadcast on RNZ as part of their ‘Smart Talk’ series last night.

If you want to hear what radio sounded like in 1921, (including the slightly saucy first song ever played on radio in NZ)  it’s available here https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/smart_talk/audio/2018821216/voices-in-the-air-sarah-johnston-on-100-years-of-radio

Learning, Teaching & Research Support, Library Wide, MB Library

Blog: From vinyl & VHS to apps & podcasts – the changing technology of learning te reo Māori

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Ata mārie koutou.  To mark Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori  we had planned a display in the foyer of Te Puna Rakahau o Macmillan Brown of collection items which show the way changing technologies have been used by te reo learners over the past 160 years.

Covid put paid to that plan, so I turned it into a blog, which we shared on social media last week.  But in case you missed it…here it is!  http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/te-wiki/

(P.S. The items mentioned are now on display upstairs at MB if you are interested in checking them out.)