Library Resources
The library's chief research strengths in History are:
The Macmillan Brown Library
This houses the University Library's research collection of New Zealand and Pacific Island materials. Its core collection comprises books, theses, government publications, periodicals and pamphlets, including many specialised works which are of great assistance to postgraduate students. The Library's Manuscripts collection includes personal papers and diaries, records and minutes of organisations; its Archives collection includes, for instance, a large amount of Trade Union material. The Library also has a Photograph collection, a Microfilm collection which includes runs of New Zealand newspapers, Maori newspapers, and British Colonial Office records, and a Fiche collection which includes Wise's Directories, early electoral rolls, and the WCTU journal. It holds maps, video tapes (New Zealand and Pacific Island material) and audio tapes (including items from Radio New Zealand sound archives and Replay Radio). The Ngai Tahu Archives are also housed in the Macmillan Brown Library.
The early modern and modern British history collection
The Central Library has probably the best collection of printed sources in New Zealand outside the National Library, especially on the 'long' eighteenth century. The collection includes the Commons Journal, parliamentary debates and papers, Tudor state papers and the eighteenth-century Gentleman's and London Magazines, a complete run of the Annual Register, many of the publications of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, and standard editions of memoirs, correspondence and collected works in both older and more scholarly modern form. In both print and microform, the Library holds collections of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pamphlets and some eighteenth- and nineteenth-century newspapers. The Reference section contains calendars and bibliographies which facilitate access by interloan to collections held nationally in the Parliamentary and Alexander Turnbull Libraries, including the growing microfilm collection of entries in the Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue, which the Library holds on CD-ROM.
The Library also has strengths in other more specific areas, especially for Honours work and MA theses. Our holdings for research in aspects of 20th century history, including both World Wars, are strong and continually growing. Academic staff members can answer enquiries about resources in their areas of research interest.
The Interloan service
The Interloan service offered by the Library, which postgraduate students may use, allows us to complement our strengths with resources elsewhere, whether from the National Library or other New Zealand libraries, Australian libraries or those further afield. Although it is unlikely that libraries will lend books or other items published before 1800, many resources, both manuscript and printed, are now available in microform.
There are charges for material borrowed through the Interloan service but for thesis writers these may be refunded from Programme research funds.
University of Canterbury Postgraduate Students Society (Postgrad Society)
The Postgrad Society is a university-wide society for all postgraduates at the University of Canterbury. It is both a social club for postgraduates, and a representative society (and lobby group) for postgraduate issues. The Society encourages all postgraduates to become involved with the society.
For more information see the History Postgraduate Student Representative(s) or the co-ordinator of the History Thesis Writers' Group.