Array
(
[entityType] => ITEM
[entity] => Array
(
[contextId] => aims
[id] => R25985703
[idSort] => R25985703
[name] => Nominal Return of men of the Colonial Forces whose claims to the New Zealand War Medal have been investigated and admitted
[identifier] => Array
(
[BoxNumber] => Array
(
[0] => 4
)
[priref] => Array
(
[0] => 4800260
)
[PositionReference] => Array
(
[0] => 2
)
)
[parentId] => 22210
[additionalDescriptionItem] => William McKechney, H. J. Webber, Robert Cunningham, Peter Loftus, Joel D. Isaac, William Linton Beloe, Richard Hart, George Lindsey, William Nichols, Benjamin Gollop, William Bayley, William Vercoe, Reverend J. Elmslie].
Copy of New Zealand Gazette notice. This document has been separated from its original file
[conditionsOfAccess] => Open
[digitalRecordInArchive] =>
[hasBeginningDate] => Array
(
[type] => YearStart
[normalizedValue] => 1890-01-01T00:00:00.0Z
[dateQualifier] => Array
(
[0] => approximate
[1] => yearOnly
)
)
[hasEndDate] => Array
(
[type] => YearEnd
[normalizedValue] => 1890-01-01T00:00:00.0Z
[dateQualifier] => Array
(
[0] => exact
[1] => yearOnly
)
)
[hasOrHadCategory] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[name] => Text
[type] => ContentType
)
)
[isAssociatedWithPlace] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[name] => Wellington repository
)
)
[isOrWasIncludedIn] => Array
(
[0] => 22210
)
[issuableStatus] => Issuable
[itemType] => Item
[managementRelation] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[name] => Army Department
[type] => transferring
[hasBeginningDate] => Array
(
[normalizedValue] => 1964-01-01T00:00:00.0Z
[dateQualifier] => Array
(
[0] => yearOnly
)
)
[hasEndDate] => Array
(
[normalizedValue] => 1964-01-01T00:00:00.0Z
[dateQualifier] => Array
(
[0] => yearOnly
)
)
[itemType] => Agency
[relationHasSource] => AAAL
)
)
[metadataRestrictionStatus] => Open
[rdfType] => record
[recordIsMissing] =>
[ricType] => Physical
[ricTypeLegacy] => Item
[setSpec] => items
)
)
Item
R25985703
1890
Physical
Open
William McKechney, H. J. Webber, Robert Cunningham, Peter Loftus, Joel D. Isaac, William Linton Beloe, Richard Hart, George Lindsey, William Nichols, Benjamin Gollop, William Bayley, William Vercoe, Reverend J. Elmslie].
Copy of New Zealand Gazette notice. This document has been separated from its original file
Wellington repository
Text
4
2
No restrictions.
W5573, W5614
All personnel files are open, except for:
Reference enquiries from private individuals in sealed envelopes, which are restricted for 10 years from date of transfer to protect the privacy of enquirers. At the end of this 10 year period, the restrictions shall be reviewed jointly by the New Zealand Defence Force and Archives New Zealand. (Note: the sealed envelopes do not contain information about service personnel, they are enquiries from private individuals only).
Note: Reviews are not complete at this time. All such files should therefore be regarded as restricted until such time as their status is updated to 'open' in Archway. This applies even if the restriction expiry date, as recorded in the record list on Archway, has been reached or passed.
New Zealand Defence Force Historian, Headquarters New Zealand Defence Force, Private Bag, Wellington
An alternative search system for Archives NZ, inspired by the beautiful simplicity of the beloved Archway system.
π How does it work?
The search results displayed here are sourced directly from the backend of Archives NZ's publicly available Collections Search system, in almost exactly the same way that the official website works, but organised and displayed differently.
To start with, you can do a straight-forward search with a few keywords and an optional date range and whether to focus on digitised items. You then have the option to filter the results futher (such as by Series and Format - photos, documents, etc).
You can highlight search keywords in the results by clicking the orange text in 'X results matching {keywords}'
The Advanced Search allows you to search with criteria such as showing only Series or Agency results, records held in a specific location, plus sorting and grouping options.
You can also browse within a Series or Accession by clicking the Series name. Search for records within that Series by using the search box on that page.
Digitised records can be viewed by clicking on the thumbnail or the 'Show Scan' links. This embeds a simple viewer directly in the page. You can switch to the official Archives NZ viewer by clicking the π Archives NZ Source link under the viewer.
Reporting by RNZ's Phil Pennington produced an internal Archives NZ report on Collections Search, describing: "Several significant issues ... slowness, a lack of booking functionality and an external user design that makes accessing archival records difficult. The level of user experience in place now is well below what was in place before the roll out". The report goes on to detail a number of privacy breaches, "continued delays by the vendor" on software improvements, and outages of 29 days in total, out of the ten months since launch.
This alternative search system aims to address some of the shortcomings of Collections Search, such as:
Only 12 search results are displayed at a time
Pages load very slowly
Full name of search result is cut off after a few words
No direct link to scanned documents
Type of record (military records, divorce files, land records, etc) and access status is not shown
It is almost impossible to browse records within a Series or Accession
π Are my searches private?
Great question! In a nutshell, your searches are visible to me, but anonymous.
Your search queries on this system are recorded in logs for a period of time, without any user-identifiable information associated with them, for debugging purposes.
I have no way of identifying you as a person, or associating your search queries with you.
This website does not use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, or any other analytics/tracking software.
π Who made this?
I'm Luke Howison, a freelance web developer with an interest in genealogy. I have written a few homebrew tools to assist with this research, such as NZ Ancestor Search Helper.