A chance to digitise and learn about your ancestry at Te Awamutu Education & Research Centre

Sarah Dawe the Te Awamutu Museum collections manager using Ancestry.com. Photo / Kate Durie

In celebration of the new Te Awamutu Museum Education & Research Centre at 55 Rickit Road, the establishment is excited to be offering a six-month programme of fun, family-friendly activities that will provide learning experiences for visitors of all ages.

“We are still the Te Awamutu Museum team; the original site of the museum is still closed following the seismic assessment last year in October. We moved here, and instead of calling ourselves a museum, we have called ourselves the Education & Research Centre ‘til we figure out what is happening going forward. This is because we can’t have a lot of the collections here due to [us] not being able to meet the climate control or pest control conditions.

“Now we are trying to hone in on telling some of our key stories and telling them well with an education perspective, with school groups and the support of the Ministry of Education,” says Te Awamutu Museum director Anne Blyth.

To kick off the Adults Collection Activities, this July the Research Room scanner, with all its contents, will be available for booking for those who are interested in digitising family photographs, including negatives and slides, as well as scrapbooks, documents or diaries. Collections manager Sarah Dawe will be there to help those people out with using the technology.

Visitors can hire the Research Room for free for a few hours at a time.

In the research space, they have a published collection that is mainly focused on the history of the area and the land wars. People are always welcome to come and read that collection.

The space has other resources such as a microfiche reader, which can aid in reading the births, deaths and marriages index for the area. This index is way more in-depth than what people can access online. The only other place locally it can be accessed is in Hamilton.

“Digitising old photos and documents can be an expensive process. So, those who have the time are able to do it themselves for free. The digitised versions can then be saved to a USB or [however] they would like it saved. If they want it printed, there will be a small fee,” says Anne.

There is a desk and computer available for people to access online collections, as a lot of the collections have been digitised.

There are short training sessions people can book to learn how to use the technology available to them in the room.

Also starting this July, the museum has an Ancestry.com subscription under the library service to offer the community, which can be accessed via the research room.

“It does differ from Ancestry.com slightly. The library edition is a paid subscription that the museum is paying for and is free for the community to use. It provides users with a lot more content and resources,” says Sarah.

Ancestry.com is renowned as being one of the best genealogy databases. It holds digitised records which can be accessed - immigration records, births, marriages, census records, military records and deaths. The site also allows people to travel their family history further than the Waipā region.

During August, to celebrate Family History Month, the collection team will be offering one-on-one training in the use of Ancestry.com with the museum subscription for those that are not familiar with using it.

Visitors can book a free introduction session. Sessions will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11am to 12pm during the month of August.

“The museum has paid for the subscription, which is great for people who are on fixed incomes or pensioners who are interested in researching their family history but can’t afford a subscription to various family history sites. Even if people don’t know how to use the sites - this is why there is the offer of one-on-ones and inductions available to learn how to use Ancestry.com,” says Anne.

Whatever is accessed on Ancestry.com can be emailed directly to the personal email of the user. For a small fee, the museum does offer printing for those looking to print off what they have found.

“We are always happy to hear people’s stories if they find something interesting and want to share,” says Sarah.

It is the same with documents.

“We would never push for that, but if someone was digitising a document and is happy for it to be part of the collection for other researchers - and it isn’t personal family records - then we would be happy to have it,” says Anne.

There will be more public programmes for adults in the future and the museum will be running a new theme every month up until December.

E-mail museum@waipadc.govt.nz for more information or call 07 872 0085.