Our reading room hours are changing

From Monday 2 August 2021, our hours across the country will be changing. The new hours are:

• Auckland: Monday-Friday 9am – 1pm

• Wellington: Monday-Friday 10am – 3pm

• Christchurch: Monday-Friday 9am – 1pm

• Dunedin: Monday-Friday 9 am – 1 pm

Over the last 10 years we've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who visit our reading rooms, and an increase in those who access archives online.

To be a vibrant, trusted, national archive we need to provide a modern service that meets our customers' needs.

Reducing reading room hours has allowed us to put our energy into listing and digitising records and making them available online. This provides better access to New Zealand’s public archives for more users.

We piloted our reading room changes in 2019. We received valuable feedback from this pilot, and have worked to balance the needs of our users with our aspirations as an organisation, to make sure our services are as accessible as possible.

Learn more about our direction for the future of Te Rua Mahara

We looked at many options based on our evaluation of the pilot and the feedback we have received to date.

We decided to make the new hours more user-friendly, so visitors can easily access the services and information they need. These new hours also provide a balance between public access to reading rooms and allowing the mahi we need to do for the move to the new building to continue.

Standardising hours across Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin makes it less confusing for researchers planning to visit multiple offices.

We took the Treaty of Waitangi into consideration before making the decision to change our reading room hours, and we’ve taken any feedback in relation to the Treaty and our obligations to Treaty partners seriously. We know that improving digital access will benefit our Treaty partners, and Māori stakeholders, because we know that travelling and accommodation are expensive particularly for those who don’t live in the main centres. It’s one of our strategic aims to take the nation’s archives to the people, rather than making them come into the reading rooms.

We’re also developing mutually agreed work plans to better respond to Māori, like our letters of commitment, which include internships and metadata improvement projects that continue to build our post-settlement relationships with our Treaty partners.

We intend to collaborate with Māori to better understand a Te Ao Māori view in regard to access of culturally sensitive records that does not fit in with a Western paradigm.

We also have our online avenues of access for all researchers including our Treaty partners. These continue to grow daily.