In November 1867, eight days after the Auckland Philosophical Society (later the Auckland Institute) was formed, a meeting has held to discuss the purchasing of periodicals, with a view to forming a library.
—The Centennial History of the Auckland Institute and Museum, 1867–1967
The Research Library cares for and provides access to the Museum’s Documentary Heritage collections. These comprise manuscripts, ephemera, maps, charts and plans, newspapers and periodicals, rare and contemporary books and pamphlets, photographs, and works of art in the form of paintings, bookplates, and sketches and drawings. The Museum’s own business and research archives are housed alongside these. As the above quote illustrates, the Research Library began chiefly as an academic venture under the auspices of what would become the Auckland branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi.
The Research Library’s nationally significant holdings in both original material and published works parallel (and hence support research of) the wider museum collections. We have, for example, an overarching emphasis on the Auckland province and te ao Māori; an impressive collection of botanical books; academic and general-interest works to do with the natural sciences, as well as a wealth of material covering subjects as varied as applied arts and design, ethnology and human history, and, of course, military history. Our collections are used frequently for research into whakapapa, genealogy, and family history. Where possible, the Library Reading Room collection enriches temporary and short-term exhibitions through the acquisition and display of relevant new material.
At right: Auckland: City of Sunshine. Auckland: Whitcombe & Tombs. 1942. DU436.12.A7 AUC.