This paper describes a major undertaking by the Upper Hutt Libraries Heritage Team to educate and engage its local community about the brief period at the end of the 20th century when Upper Hutt was a major industrial centre. While a physical exhibition within the local library provided a focal point, digital and online technologies played a crucial role in the larger endeavour of which this was part. For instance, social media outreach via Facebook groups was pivotal to uncovering information, locating artefacts, and identifying oral history subjects. The exhibition itself also contained important digital elements, most notably an audio-visual display of short films made using oral history extracts. Visitors selected and listened to these films via an old Telecom pushbutton phone (of the kind once made in Upper Hutt), modified using a raspberry pi mini-computer. Finally, to ensure ongoing impact, the exhibition was subsequently repackaged into various forms of online digital content, using both the Library’s Recollect website and the City Council’s ArcGIS StoryMaps tool. This presentation will discuss problems encountered and lessons learned, and how small local history teams, working on a minimal budget, can have maximum impact through leveraging the power of digital technology.
Reid Perkins is Te Māngai Mahara/Community Heritage Advisor at Upper Hutt Libraries, where he has worked since 2012. The Library was an early adopter of the Recollect platform and has always placed a strong emphasis on using digital technology for local history purposes. Reid has presented several times previously at NDF.
Lizzie Errington is Manu Mahara/Librarian Heritage and Archives at Upper Hutt Libraries. She is a graduate of the Museum and Heritage Studies programme at Victoria University of Wellington.
Tracey Kearns is a graduate of the Museum and Heritage Studies programme at Victoria University of Wellington. She was Te Tīeke Mahara/Co-ordinator Heritage and Archives at Upper Hutt Libraries from 2017 to January 2025. She is now Curator at Waitaki Museum in Oamaru.