Early New Zealand Books

Early New Zealand Books (ENZB) is a project from the library of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, launched in 2005, that aims at providing keyword-searchable text of significant books published about New Zealand in the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century. It also includes the subsequently published memoirs, journals and correspondence of people active in this era. The project has been funded and managed by the University of Auckland Library and for many years was freely available on the internet.[1][2][3]

Each page is linked to an image of that page from the original book. This provides researchers with assurance of accuracy. There are special searches for captions to illustrations and chapter summaries as well as a general full-text search across the whole corpus. The images are available at original size and extra-large. Books are also available as downloadable ePub ebooks. It is one of a number of projects at the University of Auckland library that use the b-engine rendering engine. In February 2015 three hundred and twenty-seven volumes have been digitized. Twenty-seven were contributed by Auckland Libraries and twenty-four by the Auckland War Memorial Museum.[1]

It is distinct from a similar collection of digitized older New Zealand publications, viz. the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection from Victoria University of Wellington.[4]

As of 2024, the database was only available to staff and students of the university.[5]

It does not include the rarest early New Zealand book A History of the Birds of New Zealand by ornithologist Walter Buller and plates by the artist JG Keulemans.[6]

  1. ^ a b "ENZB Early New Zealand Books". University of Auckland Library. Archived from the original on 9 October 2006. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  2. ^ "Early New Zealand Books (ENZB) - University of Otago, New Zealand". Otago University Library. Archived from the original on 11 October 2015. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  3. ^ "The early New Zealand books [electronic resource] : enzb / the University of Auckland Library". National Library of New Zealand. 1 January 2005. Archived from the original on 9 February 2019. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  4. ^ Brown, Russell (22 October 2014). "Digital media and the internet – Information". Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  5. ^ "About our collections: digitised collections". University of Auckland. Retrieved 3 October 2024.
  6. ^ "A Search for the Holy Grail of Rare Books". Newsroom. 8 July 2020. Retrieved 16 January 2021.