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In the Dalmatian Cultural Society in Auckland on November 16, 2023, the exhibition They Wrote in Glagolitic Script… was presented. After the lecture on Glagolitic script, the presentation of the book Their faraway home was held. The exhibition and lecture were attended by members of the society, with whom the collaborators on the Croatian Emigrant Press project discussed the possibilities of further research and the digitization of publications, especially the Zora newspaper, copies of which are available in the Society’s archives.

At the University of Auckland, research was conducted in the library on November 15, 2023. Based on the research and meeting with prof Tatjana Buklijaš, more publications related to Croats in New Zealand were found. All these publications will be added to the bibliographies created as part of the Croatian Emigrant Press project. An old printing press from 1863 is on display in the library. The first Croatian newspapers in New Zealand were most likely printed using a similar model.

On November 13, 2023, Ivana Hebrang Grgić and Ana Barbarić visited the Croatian Cultural Society in Auckland and on that occasion discussed the possibilities of cooperation in researching publications of Croatian imigrants. A part of the exhibition They Wrote in Glagolitic Script… created in cooperation with the National and University Library in Zagreb and with the support of the Central State Office for Croats abroad, is on display in the Society, with the aim of promoting the Glagolitic script in the Croatian diaspora.

This was followed by a meeting with the New Zealand author Pip McKay, who is engaged in family history research. Producing so-called family books in New Zealand and  increasingly common practice of publishing such books was discussed. The picture shows a family tree from a family album.

The book Their faraway home: The story of Croats in New Zealand through publications by Ivana Hebrang Grgić and Ana Barbarić was published by the Australian and New Zealand publisher Exisle Publishing and Croatian publisher Naklada Ljevak. The book is updated English edition of the book Ni s kućom ni bez kuće: nakladnička djelatnost Hrvata u Novome Zelandu (Neither with a house, nor witout a house: publishing activity of Croats in New Zealand), published in 2021 and available in the Croatian Emigrant Press Repository. The editor of the book is  Nives Tomašević, Ph.D., and the reviewers of the English edition are Maja Krtalić, Ph.D. (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) and Jasna Novak Milić, Ph.D. (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia). The book can be purchased in Croatian, Australian and New Zealand bookstores and through the publisher’s website.

U On the 3rd DARIAH-HR International Conference (Digital Humanities & Heritage), on October 27, 2023 in Zagreb, Ivana Hebrang Grgić and Ana Barbarić held a presentation entitled Digital Infrastructure for Cultural Heritage: Bibliographies and Digitization within the Croatian Emigrant Press Project. The presentation presented the infrastructure used in the Croatian Emigrant Press project – Koha open source library software and the Croatian Emigrant Press repository on the Dabar platform (digital academic archives and repositories).

Croatian Emigrant Press Repository (HIT Reposiotry) on the 16th October 2023 is included in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), international, quality-assured, global database that hosts open access repositories (i.e. repositories that provide free, open acess to academic outputs and resources). Each repository record within OpenDOAR has been reviewed and prcessed by editorial team in order to offer a trusted service for the community.  The service launched in 2005 as the product of a collaborative project between the University of Nottingham and Lund University, funded by OSI, Jisc, SPARC Europe and CURL.

During August and September 2023, three books were digitized in cooperation with the National and University Library in Zagreb. Two were unavailable in Croatian libraries,  copies and consent for digitization were acquired in cooperation with the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia in Australia and the Croatian Catholic Center in Canberra (the book Sisters Adorers of the Blood of Christ: 50 years of life and ministry in Australia and the book 40th Anniversary of the Croatian Catholic Mission Canberra). Along with those two books, the bookmarks that are published as promotional material were digitized. The third book was almost unavailable in Croatian libraries, a copy and permission for digitization were acquired thanks to the cooperation with the Croatian Catholic Center in Wollongong and the Province of the Franciscans of the Glagolitic Third Order in Zagreb. The book is Moje životno vrludanje by Frano Stipan Šešelja.

From July 14 to 16, 2023, the  AUS-NZ Croatian Women in Leadership Summit was held in Biograd na Moru. The association was founded in Australia in 2019 and today gathers more than 600 women at online meetings and in-person events. Thanks to the cooperation of the Croatian Emigrant Press project with this association, significant connections have been created for further work in research. Thus, H. E. Betty Pavelich, Ambassador of the Republic of Croatia in Australia, brought two valuable books that were not available in Croatia, and will be digitized as part of the project.

Project collaborators from Australia and New Zealand stayed in Zagreb during May and June 2023. Working meetings were held with  professor Jasna Novak Milić, Head of the Center for Croatian Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney; with retired professor Luka Budak, former head of the Center and with Majom Krtalić, professor from the University of Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand. Further cooperation regarding the research of Croatian publications in those countries and the organization of workshops promoting Croatian printed and manuscript heritage was discussed.