Award-winning British podcast The Allusionist is a logophile’s dream.

Ever heard of Toki Pona (said to be ‘the smallest language in the world’) or indefinite hyperbolic numerals (‘zillions, jillions or squillions’)? Have you questioned Western yogic deployments of ‘namaste’, opening lines on dating apps, or dating systems of the BC, AD and BCE kind?

Producer and host Helen Zaltzman is here for you. A veteran podcaster with the long-running, hugely popular indie podcast Answer Me This! since 2007, Zaltzman created The Allusionist in 2015.

In each episode, she rumbles with language with infectious verve and a generous helping of pop culture.

Award-winning British podcaster Helen Zaltzman (aka The Allusionist) returns to the stage to rumble with language with infectious verve, and a generous helping of pop culture — with musical support from Martin Austwick.

About the speakers

Helen Zaltzman is a multiple award-winning podcast host and producer. Her linguistics podcast The Allusionist was the first show created especially for the prestigious Radiotopia network. Answer Me This!, the comedy show she co-founded with Olly Mann in 2007, is one of Britain's most successful independent podcasts.

Martin Austwick is a podcaster, musician and singer-songwriter, and has released albums as Pale Bird, and songs about science as Dr Martin Austwick. He has performed music live for The Allusionist, 99% Invisible, The Bugle, and the Third Coast International Audio Awards, and contributed music for several podcasts. His podcast about every Tom Waits song is called Song by Song.

Using stories, letters and film, Dead Letters, Great War Stories brings to vivid life the personal experiences of the First World War.

Domestic censorship in New Zealand 1914 to 1920

Hear from archivist and historian Jared Davidson, who has just published Dead Letters: Censorship and Subversion in New Zealand 1914-1920 (Otago University Press), revealing the impact of domestic censorship on the lives of radicals, writers, and everyday people during wartime and beyond.

'Haiku' film documentaries about the Great War

Then enjoy a selection of films from Anna Cottrell’s TV series Great War Stories, which reveal moving personal stories in letters and diaries, including some that escaped the censors.

Great War Stories consist of five TV series of short personal stories told through letters and diaries, many held in the ATL, some from whānau.

Among eight ‘haiku’ documentaries are Leonard Hart’s harrowing letter about the horrors of Passchendaele that evaded the censors; and Te Puea’s refusal to send her men to fight ‘white men’s wars’.

Another victim of the State was young Victor Spencer, shot at dawn for desertion in spite of his letter pleading poor mental health.

After reading a family diary Gareth Farr, composer, wrote a cello concerto for three relatives killed on the Western Front. Katherine Mansfield writes movingly about the death of her brother Leslie Beauchamp.

About the speakers

An archivist by day and labour historian by night, Jared Davidson is an award-winning writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. Through social biography and history from below, Jared explores the lives of people often overlooked by traditional histories — from working-class radicals of the early twentieth century to prison convicts of the nineteenth.

Anna Cottrell’s been making documentaries for over 25 years. She hunts out people with a good story who face life’s challenges with courage and humour. Examples of this include her documentaries Wahine Disaster, 50 Years On (2018) and The Kiwi the Knight and the Qashqai (2018).

A bird in hand is worth a visit to the National Library of New Zealand!

Join us for a day of feathery fun, face painting, art, crafts and storytelling and be in to win 1 of 5 family passes to Zelandia!

We need your help find the birds that have hidden the chocolate eggs! Answer a few easy questions to help you uncover their secret stash!

 Wear your best wings to win a spot prize

Fun bird facts

Fun fact #1 The eastern bar-tailed godwit, ‘kuaka’, flies non-stop for eight days from Alaska to Aotearoa every year to escape the northern winter.

Fun fact #2 The shining cuckoo or ‘pipiwharauroa’ spends winter in the western tropical pacific while the ‘koekoea’, the long-tailed cuckoo travels further east through Micronesia. They return in spring

Looking forward to seeing you.

Eminent medical researcher David Skegg argues that national health outbreaks such as the 2016 Havelock North campylobacteriosis outbreak and the recent measles outbreak highlight weaknesses in our country’s health infrastructure.

Critically, these weaknesses are already evident in problems ranging from child nutrition to cancer and are connected to lobbying by major industries in the 1990s.

New Zealand must, Skegg explains, invest more in public health and find the political will needed to oppose the forces that damage public health: we neglect public health at our peril.

This event is co-hosted by the University of Otago. BWB gratefully acknowledges the support of Creative New Zealand and the National Library.

About the speaker

Sir David Skegg is an epidemiologist and public health physician with a highly esteemed career spanning many decades. His research has focused on cancer causes and control, contraceptive and drug safety, and reproductive health.

Professor Diana Sarfati is the Head of Department and Director of the Cancer and Chronic Conditions (C3) research group, Department of Public Health, University of Otago.

Together, those two phenomena — the 4th Industrial Revolution and demographic change — will have profound implications for the nature of work. This lecture explores factors shaping the future of work in this country and the challenges associated with these momentous changes.

About the speaker

Professor Richard Shaw is Director BA (External Connections), in which capacity he promotes the many merits of Massey's BA to external audiences.

He is also a Professor of Politics. He convenes and teaches Turangawaewae: Identity and Belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand, one of the core first-year papers in the BA. He also teaches undergraduate courses in New Zealand politics, and a postgraduate paper comparing governing in presidential and parliamentary systems.

His research interests are in cabinet government systems, and specifically in the roles of political advisers in government ministers' offices.

Are you doing research? Joan McCracken will look at the some of the collections and resources of the National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library you can access online and onsite that can add context and content to your research.

This is an updated version of the talk Joan gave during Family History Month 2018.

About the speaker

Joan McCracken has worked at the Alexander Turnbull Library since 1984 (this time — she first worked at the library in 1972).

Since 2011 she has been the leader of the Library’s Outreach Services team. The team supports Turnbull’s public events programme, and includes a Field Conservator, who advises community groups on care of collections, and two oral history advisors.

Joan has a personal interest in family history research.

The Alexander Turnbull Library is offering our popular introductory oral history workshops in Wellington.

These workshops are for people considering using oral history in their work, community or personal projects.

Two-day workshop

This is a two-day workshop with one month between sessions.

The workshops will provide information on the essentials of oral history research including:

• methodology
• project planning
• best equipment
• interview techniques
• legal and ethical issues, and
• processing oral history, in order to make the material available for use.

There’ll be plenty of hands-on practice!

Day one: Introduction to oral history research

Saturday 13 April 2019 8.45am to 4.30pm

An introduction to oral history methodology. How to: 

• plan an oral history project
• choose the best equipment
• achieve clear audio recordings
• select informants
• follow ethical procedures
• develop questioning techniques
• process oral history, and make the material available for use.

Bring a recorder if you already have one you intend to use for recording. If you are considering buying a recorder, please wait until after the workshop.

Day two: Recording serious

Saturday 25 May 2019 8.45am - 4.30pm

This day will build on the introductory course. Attendance at Day One is a prerequisite. We will:

• review work completed 
• look in more detail interview techniques
• project planning, and
• technical, ethical and legal issues. 

For Turnbull, this took the shape of yachting. He brought to yachting the same total involvement — to the point of obsession — as he did his book collecting.

Turnbull helped shape the sport from its earliest days, and the foundations he laid with others fostered the culture of excellence New Zealand has today. He was a member and administrator for 4 boating clubs (founder of 2 of these) and owned 3 racing vessels between 1893-1908.

Gavin Pascoe says, 'The only place you will see Turnbull enjoying himself is when boating, and it is through the sport that we can glimpse the reputedly short-tempered, private man as a person engaged, adventurous, and laughing.'

A Friends of the Turnbull Library event.

About the speaker

Gavin Pascoe is a librarian at the National Library of New Zealand. He is also the founder of the Wellington Classic Yacht Trust.

Who this professional learning event is for

This event is for intermediate and secondary school teachers, and school library staff

Why attend this event

• Develop strategies to spark curiosity, engage learners, and deepen understanding of New Zealand’s eventful past, especially through questioning.
• Use a rich collection of resources and tools, including the recently published curiosity cards.
• Focus on topics relating to New Zealand culture and heritage, in particular, Tuia — Encounters 250.

What you'll learn

• Understand how rich resources can be used to inspire inquiry and inform deep learning about topics relating to our culture and heritage.
• Find out how to access digital resources which can relate to your local area and interests.
• Explore ways to use curiosity cards and create your own.
• Discover how students and educators can curate New Zealand digital resources in DigitalNZ.

What you'll do

• Experience using a resource, or a collection of resources, to inspire and inform.
• Explore ways curiosity cards and their supporting materials can be used in your classroom.
• Discover the features of DigitalNZ as a search engine and curation platform.

What's provided

Morning tea is provided.

Register or find out more

Registrations closed 5pm 29 March.

For more information, email katrina.young-drew@dia.govt.nz

More Services to Schools professional learning courses and events

The Intrigue and inspire: Using rich resources to explore our past — primary schools (Auckland ) workshop on 28 March has been expanded to include content for secondary school teachers and school library staff. 

Note that registrations for this workshop close 5pm 21 March.

Intrigue and inspire: Using rich resources to explore our past — primary/secondary schools (Auckland) — has details of this workshop and registration information.

For more information, email sandi.faulconbridge@dia.govt.nz

More Services to Schools professional learning courses and events

Here she discusses using oral history — ‘history from below’ — to document what can seem to be a secret or hidden world and telling stories that are both extraordinary and ordinary.

The book is illustrated with photographs taken by Madeleine Slavick, commissioned especially for this publication.

‘One thing I’d like to see is the recognition of sex workers as ordinary, sometimes rather extraordinary, people.’
Dame Catherine Healy, national coordinator, New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective

About the speaker

Caren Wilton is an oral historian, writer and editor, and was the recipient of three New Zealand Oral History Awards for her series of interviews with sex workers.

An editor at Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand for almost 9 years, she is also a freelance book editor. She was the coordinator of an oral history project focusing on Upper Hutt in the 1960s for Upper Hutt City Library in 2015–16, and is the author of short-fiction collection The Heart Sutra (Otago University Press, 2003).

Who this professional learning event is for

This event is for primary and intermediate school teachers, and school library staff.

Why attend this event

• Develop strategies to spark curiosity, engage learners, and deepen understanding of New Zealand’s eventful past, especially through questioning.
• Use a rich collection of resources and tools, including the recently published curiosity cards.
• Focus on topics relating to New Zealand culture and heritage, in particular, Tuia — Encounters 250.

What you'll learn

• Understand how rich resources can be used to inspire inquiry and inform deep learning about topics relating to our culture and heritage.
• Find out how to access digital resources which can relate to your local area and interests.
• Explore ways to use curiosity cards and create your own.
• Discover how students and educators can curate New Zealand digital resources in DigitalNZ.

What you'll do

• Experience using a resource, or a collection of resources, to inspire and inform.
• Explore ways curiosity cards and their supporting materials can be used in your classroom.
• Discover the features of DigitalNZ as a search engine and curation platform.

What's provided

Morning tea is provided.

Register or find out more

Registrations closed 5pm 22 March.

For more information, email katrina.young-drew@dia.govt.nz

This workshop has been expanded to include content for secondary school teachers and school library staff.

Dates, fees, and registration

Who this professional learning event is for

This event is for primary, intermediate, and secondary school teachers, and school library staff.

Why attend this event

• Develop strategies to spark curiosity, engage learners, and deepen understanding of New Zealand’s eventful past, especially through questioning.
• Use a rich collection of resources and tools, including the recently published curiosity cards.
• Focus on topics relating to New Zealand culture and heritage, in particular, Tuia — Encounters 250.

What you'll learn

• Understand how rich resources can be used to inspire inquiry and inform deep learning about topics relating to our culture and heritage.
• Find out how to access digital resources which can relate to your local area and interests.
• Explore ways to use curiosity cards and create your own.
• Discover how students and educators can curate New Zealand digital resources in DigitalNZ.

What you'll do

• Experience using a resource, or a collection of resources, to inspire and inform.
• Explore ways curiosity cards and their supporting materials can be used in your classroom.
• Discover the features of DigitalNZ as a search engine and curation platform.

What's provided

Morning tea is provided.

Register or find out more

Registrations closed 5pm 21 March.

For more information, email sandi.faulconbridge@dia.govt.nz

More Services to Schools professional learning courses and events

This is the latest in the series of events with writers in residence at the Randell Cottage in Thorndon. These free public events at the National Library are held under the aegis of the Randell Cottage Writers Trust and organised in association with the Friends of the Randell Cottage.

The French writers develop their own programme while in New Zealand: they take different approaches to learning about our bi-cultural realities, discussing them and reflecting them in subtle ways in their later writing.

French writers talk about their writing

The events with the French writers are held mainly in English, though the writers will happily read excerpts in French from their work if translations are not available!

These evening events take the form of a gently probing interview, with a screen projection of illustrations and text, and with plenty of time for dialogue with the audience.

The events are aimed at a general audience who may or may not be fluent in French, but who appreciate French literature and culture, and enjoy the chance to talk about literary creation with a practitioner from France.

The National Library gratefully acknowledges the cooperation of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in holding these events.

Randell Cottage Writers Trust

About the speaker

With a background in scenography, Karin Serres has worked as a set and costume designer, writer and translator.

She has written more than 80 plays, often staged, published and translated, for both young audiences and adults, and radio plays and novels.

She enjoys sharing artistic experiences throughout the world.

Karin Serres website

We're improving the coverage of New Zealand cartoonists and comic artists in Wikipedia!

This is the second cartoon edit-a-thon hosted by the Library and this time we’ll be focusing on the artists behind Three Words: An anthology of Aotearoa/NZ women’s comics.

Dr Mike Dickison is at the Library as Wikipedian in residence for January and February, thanks to a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. This is one of a number of events he will be running in association with the Library. We’re thrilled to be working with him to highlight the work of New Zealand cartoonists and comics artists.

New Wikipedia editors welcome

Come along, even if you've never edited Wikipedia before; keen writers/researchers and comics fans welcome. There will be an introduction to Wikipedia editing at the start, and experienced editors available to help.

We'll be creating articles about contemporary artists, improving others, adding references and images, and helping correct Wikipedia's gender bias.

You don't need to be a comics expert to join in: anyone can help with editing, researching, proofreading, and adding photos.

Comic artists should definitely come

Comics artists are especially welcome to attend and invited to donate a representative sample of their work (or a self-portrait) to Commons to illustrate their article.

Timetable and other useful information

There's lots of useful information about what to expect and what to bring on Wikipedia. Also information about what you can do before the event including creating a Wikipedia account.  The more you prepare the more you can get done.

Wikipedia:Meetup/Wellington/NZ Comics and Cartoons 2

Do you remember Anne of Green Gables? Join literary historian Cheryl Paget on a pilgrimage to Prince Edward Island, Canada, and sites connected with L M Montgomery’s and her famous character.

A pilgrimage of sites connected with Anne of Green Gables

In 2016 a chance conversation with a friend led to Cheryl Paget making a pilgrimage to Prince Edward Island, Canada, and sites connected with L M Montgomery’s and her famous character Anne of Green Gables.

They visited all the properties associated with Lucy Maud Montgomery on the island, and this presentation is a recount of their trip, and a biography of her life, told through the places she loved the most and how her love of the island and home influenced her writing.

Hear from the recipient of the Friends of the Dorothy Neal White Collection research grant

Before Cheryl’s talk, Sarah Gholami, PhD candidate at Victoria University and recipient of this year’s Friends of the Dorothy Neal White Collection research grant, will introduce her research.

Sarah’s topic is All written for children? An examination of readers as implied and actual in Margaret Mahy’s picture books.

About the speaker

Currently living on the Kapiti Coast, Cheryl was born in Scotland and brought up in Suffolk, England, immigrating in 2009 to New Zealand as a single Mum with two boys.

Cheryl cites Anne of Green Gables as the biggest influence on her life, deciding at a very early age that she would go to University to study English Literature just like Anne Shirley. Cheryl completed her studies at Warwick University with an MA in Literature for Children in 1994.

The other biggest literary influence was Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series. As the New Zealand Co-ordinator for the Arthur Ransome Society, Cheryl gets to release her inner Nancy every year when organising the society’s annual weekend get-togethers.

Join us to learn about the preservation of your treasured family collections from physical books and papers to digital materials.

Family books, photographs and papers connect us to our ancestors, their lives, and thoughts. They are an invaluable resource for future generations. The family photos and documents we create now will connect our descendants to us — but how should we care for these records?

Presentations about preserving physical and digital treasures

This session will focus on the preservation of your treasured family collections whether they are physical books and papers or in a digital format.

There will be two short presentations by Vicki-Anne Heikell from the National Preservation Office, and Valerie Love, Senior Digital Archivist, followed by an opportunity for one-on-one conservation advice on your treasured family items.

Attendees are welcome to bring in a family book or a 3.5 inch floppy disk or CD-ROM for assessment (time permitting).

Please note: if you are bringing a CD-ROM or computer disk, you may also wish to bring a USB drive to transfer the files on to it (if possible).

About speakers

Vicki-Anne Heikell is Field Conservator at the Alexander Turnbull Library. She provides training and advice in the preservation of documentary heritage items and collections to individuals, groups, iwi/Māori and organisations throughout New Zealand.

Valerie Love and Flora Feltham are Digital Archivists at the Alexander Turnbull Library. They work to assess and preserve incoming born-digital unpublished collections, such as digital photographs, word documents, and oral histories.

Dr Martin Nekola will talk about the Czech community in New Zealand. His research has focused primarily on the Czechoslovak exile after 1948 and the life stories of Czechs who had to leave Czechoslovakia and settled in the US, but also in Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

Lynette Townsend will tell us how we can complete our New Zealand Oral History Award applications to improve our chances of success.

Afterwards please join us for a user pays dinner at the nearby historic Thistle Inn.

About the speakers

Dr Martin Nekola is a visiting scholar, historian and political scientist from Charles University, Prague, and whose work includes non-democratic regimes, the era of Communism and Czech communities abroad. In 2018, with illustrator Jakub Dušek, he published a comic book on the fate of Czechs who were forced to flee from their homeland after the 1948 communist coup.

Lynette Townsend is Senior Historian, Audio-visual content at Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

Hear the story of a group of 155 Irishmen living in New Zealand in WWII who refused to be conscripted into the armed forces. For the author of True To Ireland, Peter Burke, this is a deeply personal story because his father was one of the leaders of a group set up to persuade the government to allow the men to stay in New Zealand but not serve in the army. This is the untold story about a group of brave patriotic Irishmen.

True to Ireland

Peter Burke will talk about his book 'True to Ireland' which concerns a group of Irishmen who came to New Zealand in the 1930s in the hope of making a new life. When WWII broke out they faced the prospect of being conscripted into the armed forces and wearing a ‘British’ uniform which was a complete anathema to them.

They also objected to being conscripted because they claimed to be ‘citizens of Eire’, also because Ireland was neutral in WWII and the atrocities they saw committed by the British armed forces in Ireland in the 1919 – 21 War of Independence. One of the men who objected to being called up was Matt Burke, the father of the author’ and one of the leaders of a special organisation to persuade the NZ government not to conscript them.

The book traces the struggles of the men dubbed ‘sons of Eire’ to avoid ‘fighting for Britain’. At one stage 155 of them faced deportation because they were unwilling to fight. The book also highlights the close relationship that developed before, during and after WWII between Irelands Prime Minister, Eamon de Valera and the New Zealand Prime Minister, Peter Fraser.

There will be an opportunity to buy copies of the book, and have the author sign them, at the presentation.

True to Ireland website

Book walk

Following his talk, at approximately 1.20pm, Peter will take you on a walking tour of some of the places of significance to the 'sons of Eire'. There is no need to book. Just meet in the foyer of the National Library

About the speaker

Peter Burke is an award-winning journalist who has worked in television, radio, print and public relations since 1963. His father was born in Moycullen Co Galway and his mother in the coal mining town of Denniston on the West Coast.

Although he is an agricultural journalist Peter has a deep passion for Irish history and has presented papers on his book at academic Irish history conferences in New Zealand, Australia and Ireland. True To Ireland is his first book. In his ‘spare time’ he runs a small ‘lifestyle or is it life sentence’ block of land and plays golf.

Our expert panel address historic and contemporary points of view.

This forum will be live signed.

All forums will be live-streamed on the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand’s Facebook page.

Holocaust Centre of New Zealand’s Facebook

Children's Holocaust Memorial

Panel members

Dr Hilary Stace from the Health Services Research Centre, Victoria University Wellington will moderate this forum.

Tanya Black presenter, producer, Attidue TV and Director of Cummunciations, UNICEF NZ

Grace Stratton Disability Youth Advocate

Chris Harris National Director of Education, Holocaust Centre of New Zealand