Meetings with representatives of Croatian clubs were held in Whangarei, Kaitaia and Awanui on November 17, 18 and 19, 2023. Several private collections were researched and new publications and semi-publications (mainly so-called family books) were found. Digitization of one author’s book and one manuscript was agreed upon. Digitization is planned for 2024, and both items will be available in the Croatian Emigrant Press repository.
Awanui
Te Ahu Museum
Kaitaia Dalmatian Club
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.
Research was conducted in the archive, library and museum of the Dalmatian Cultural Society in Auckland on November 15 and 16, 2023. The most attention was paid to family books. Digital copies of old inventory books were made, which need to be further researched and analyzed in order to determine which records refer to family books. One dissertation related to Croats in New Zealand and several books were also found. After a thorough analysis and identification of the metadata, new records will be entered into the bibliography.
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.
Newspaper Zora was published in Auckland from 1913 to 1916. In total, at least 121 issues were published, of which 16 are available in the National and University Library in Zagreb, 36 in the library of the War Memorial Museum in Auckland and 52 in the archives of the Dalmatian Cultural Society in Auckland. As part of the Croatian Emigrant Press Project, in cooperation with the National and University Library in Zagreb, in September 2023, all copies kept in that library were digitized (15 complete and one incomplete copy).
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.
