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About Us

Welcome to Tasman District Libraries digital collection - Tasman Heritage

Our purpose

The purpose of Tasman Heritage is to curate and share historic photos, archives, stories, memories and other heritage materials relating to the Tasman District. We seek to:

  • Collect Tasman’s stories -  the memories and stories of our people including individuals, whānau, and diverse groups 
  • enhance access to local information 
  • preserve rare and unique resources from the Tasman region 
  • increase access to these digital resources  
  • increase availability of these digital resources for researchers and those outside of the Tasman region. 

 

Our staff

Tasman Heritage is administered by librarians at Richmond Library, Tasman, New Zealand. For more information about our libraries visit our main website Tasman District Libraries or contact us

 

Our history

Tasman Heritage originally started in 2010 as Kete Tasman. 

Kete Tasman was a community built digital library of cultural and heritage resources about the Tasman region of Aotearoa New Zealand.  The site was run on Kete open source software developed by Horowhenua Library Trust and Katipo Communications Ltd with support from National Library of New Zealand and the Aotearoa Peoples Network Kaharoa. Named Kete Tasman, the website was originally set-up to provide access to digitised photographs from the Waimea South Collections, an archival collection jointly owned by Tasman District Libraries and the Waimea South Historical Society since the early 1990s.  Additional materials added to Kete Tasman over time included materials from the Tasman District Council archives, oral history transcripts from the 1980s and materials from individuals and small organisations.  

After ten years the Kete platform was no longer a suitable platform for hosting the digital heritage collections, and in 2020 work began to move the existing collections from the Kete Tasman website to a new Recollect Ltd. platform. In 2021 New Zealand Libraries Partnership Programme funding enabled additional staffing to migrate content to the new site, and to create new material. This included the digitisation of unique archival material already in the libraries collections, such as the Richmond School registers, and Golden Downs Forestry photographs. It also enabled us to start building a new oral history collection and the development of projects to capture more recent local history such as local experiences during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns. 

 

Contributing material to Tasman Heritage

 
Do you or your organisation have photographs, archives, personal memories, or other material that you would like to share on Tasman Heritage? Please contact us with details of the material you wish to share and we will be in touch to discuss your materials.   
 
We cannot accept any material without prior consultation, or without a completed application form. Material must meet the criteria of the Tasman Libraries Digital Collections Policy to be considered for publication. This criteria states that material must be related to a local person, event, or place within the Tasman District, it must be original, not a photocopy or scan, it must not be available elsewhere online, and it must comply with New Zealand Copyright and other legislation.  We reserve the right to decide what content submitted for inclusion on the site is published, and to edit or remove content as needed. You will be provided with the application form once we have ascertained that your materials are suitable for the site.