The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography was originally published in five print volumes between 1990 and 2000. It comprised 3000 biographical essays about a wide range of deceased New Zealanders who had come to prominence by 1960. The Dictionary went online in 2001. In 2010 it was merged with Te Ara: the Encyclopedia of New Zealand to form the single largest reference work on New Zealand's history and society https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies
The combined Dictionary and Te Ara website is one of the largest works of scholarship ever undertaken in this country, and is unique in the world.
Since 2000 The Dictionary has been in hiatus, with the exception of a batch of 15 biographies that were published online in 2010-11. In 2017 the Ministry for Culture and Heritage decided to resume work on the Dictionary, and to publish a new batch of biographies online every year. The new programme commences with 20 new biographies of women which will be published in September this year to celebrate the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage.
In this presentation, senior historian Tim Shoebridge - the Dictionary’s programme manager, will speak about the challenges posed and opportunities offered by this new chapter in the Dictionary’s life.
These monthly Public History Talks are a collaboration between the National Library of New Zealand https://natlib.govt.nz/ and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage https://mch.govt.nz/
Recorded live at the National Library of New Zealand, 6 June 2018.
The Saving of Old St Paul’s
The tragedy of the SS Talune and the 1918 influenza pandemic
Polly Plum and the first wave of feminism
‘Researching kindergarten: the endeavours of women for the play of children’
Jazzy Nerves, Aching Feet, and Foxtrots: New Zealand’s Jazz Age
How does a city make a writer?
Māori Women, Politics and Petitions in the 19th Century
The Great War for New Zealand
Counting redcoats: Who were the imperial soldiers serving in New Zealand in the 1860s?
The Broken Decade: 1928 - 39 by Malcom McKinnon
Past Caring? Gender, Work and Emotion - A talk by Professor Barbara Brookes
Hearth and Home: Reconstructing the Rural Kitchen, c1840–1940’
The Māori War Effort at Home and Abroad 1917
New Zealand’s Rivers: can we learn from history?
Reflections on the Big Smoke
KŪPAPA - the bitter legacy of Māori alliances with the Crown
Richard Seddon: King of God’s Own
Dr Steven Loveridge: New Zealand Society at War
Dr Grant Morris: ’Legal Villain’
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