Historical Trade Stats for New Zealand - BLUE Books

Yes this is a Blue Book - in fact the Blue Book for New Zealand for the year 1842.   Archives New Zealand have digitised the 23 books of national statistics for the period 1840-1855.   They are known as blue books because of the colour of their covers (most are blue!) and they contain statistical information including trade.  They take a while to download but be patient - they contain some fascinating handwritten information.

Photo: Archives New Zealand | Te Rua Mahara o te Kawanatanga

Records & Archives Week May 1-7

Records & Archives Week celebrates the importance of records, archives and the recordkeeping professions. The theme for 2008 is 'Protect Your Records'. Everyone keeps records of some sort and those of us involved in some aspect of international trade are no exception to this, having photographs, contracts, marketing materials, supply chain flow-charts and so on. The thing they all have in common is that we would hate to lose them, because it would be very expensive and in the case of older material, it may mean a loss of our heritage.

The Records & Archives Week site has Advice on protecting your records. Have a look at it and do something this week!