History of the Museum of New Zealand Library from 1867-1927

Abstract

This is an examination of the first sixty years of the history of the Museum of New Zealand Library, and how the museum library developed whilst housed within the Colonial Museum and subsequently the Dominion Museum, and through the years of guidance of its first three directors, James Hector, Augustus Hamilton and Allan Thomson. The longest serving director of the museum was Hector, who was there for 35 years and it was he who played a major role, also acting as Director of the Geological Survey and Manager of the New Zealand Institute, until his retirement. It is a tale of constant lack of suitable space, a lack of a librarian for many years, of too many libraries lumped together, of confusion over ownership of books, of the long-running bid for a new building, of the autocratic ways of Hector, but also of the vision of Thomson in particular, the big changes in the Hamilton decade and throughout the determination that New Zealand should have a scientific museum and library. Without the help of the scientific institutions that were represented in the Colonial Museum, laboratory and library, and the persistence and rivalry of the aforementioned directors, the goal of a scientific New Zealand Museum and library might have been much harder to achieve than it turned out to be.