Industrious Kiwis: Archives and Industry

Records and Archives Week May 1-7, 2010

This is the stunning poster that has been produced for RAW 2010.  You can look at it by going to: http://www.aranz.org.nz/Site/events/RAW.aspx

The theme for RAW 2010 is archives and records of industry. New Zealanders are renowned for our ingenuity and clever ideas (our No.8 wire mentality). Archives and records are an important means of preserving our history of industry, innovation, trade, enterprise, research, science, technology and economic development. This is particularly relevant in the current economic state in helping us to reflect on our history of enterprise and ingenuity.

The organisers have suggested that these themes are considered:

• Retaining our archives and records of industry is important to our economic and social history.

• The economic development of New Zealand has been based on our primary industries, such as agriculture and horticulture.
• Our sense of pride and national identity is linked to industry; from the first export of frozen meat from Port Chalmers in 1882 to the Lord of the Rings film trilogy in 2001-2003
• The industries that New Zealand is engaged in is widening and changing from predominantly primary industries into more secondary industries.
• We need to be aware of the risk to these records that may be lost to future generations if these records are not retained

Exporting companies - of both merchandise and services are vital to this country.  This is a week when you might think about where your archives are, how they are being preserved and whether you should be asking for help from your local library or archival repository.   As you can see from the poster, photographs are so important as a record of what has happened in our international trade history.  Perhaps you have photos from when you went on a Trade Mission, or when you received an export award.  Or maybe you still have design materials from when you were developing your marketing for your overseas markets.  Better still do have the packages or containers?   All these are a very important part of our heritage and exporting companies are a part of that.

Company archives and records - THINK and ACT this week - 1-7 May 2010