Editorial – Issue 103

Opening up the archive

We’re starting to feel a little sheepish about the milestones we keep reaching. This is our third and fourth in less than three years. Still, here we go: with this – our 103rd issue – we’re delighted to announce our new Maori title, Pukapuka Aotearoa, and our searchable online archive.

Sceptics may sniff. Yes, bilingual titles and names are fashionable. But we know this is matatika, and also smart. NZB has an eager international following, which is at least as aware as we are at home that this is the only nation in the world where Maori is a living language. We’re grateful to Paora Tibble for his help in re-christening us.

It is the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board to whom we are grateful for a grant that has allowed us to develop a new website with a searchable archive. One of the grant’s conditions was that it be used for a project that would benefit the community at large – and that’s exactly what it will do.

Anyone – NZB subscriber or not, here or overseas – will soon be able to search every issue of the journal from number 1 (Autumn 1991) to 100 (Summer 2012). Just a small gap between 1995 and 1999 remains to be loaded. Only subscribers will be able to access later issues, but all the others will be accessible to everyone. You can search by issue, as well as by author and reviewer, and many genre categories – short stories, memoir, history, science, music and so on.

Peppercorn Press has always seen NZB as this country’s literary journal of record, and this step reinforces our position. Go to nzbooks.org.nz click on archive and discover, among many other highlights, what Ranginui Walker had to say about The People of Many Peaks 1769-1869, edited by Claudia Orange (Winter, 1991), Vincent O’Sullivan about Michael King’s biography of Frame (Autumn, 1999), Chris Laidlaw about rugby according to Joseph Romanos and Brian Turner (Winter, 2002), Barbara Else about David Hill’s YA novel, Running Hot (March, 2006), and Christine Johnston about Patricia Grace’s true story of Ned and Katina (Autumn, 2010).

 

Harry Ricketts

Jane Westaway

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