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Preserving Local History & Educational Trust Recollect Site
User Guide
Welcome to the Trust’s Recollect site.
The Preserving Local History and Educational Trust (Te Pupuri I Nga Hitori o Te Rohe Trust) is working to preserve the stories that have helped to shape our communities and our nation, and to make these accessible to New Zealanders both at home and abroad.
We have commenced a multi-stage, multi-year project, Your Stories, that seeks to preserve Aotearoa New Zealand’s written history and increase access to New Zealand’s cultural history. The Trust works with its strategic partners (National Library of New Zealand, NZ Micrographics) to preserve at risk community newspapers in the National Digital Heritage Archive, plus provide text-searchable access through Papers Past.
This Recollect site acts as a holding ground for titles waiting to be made available through Papers Past. When available, their Collections page on Recollect will have a link through to Papers Past.
Find out more here at the Trust’s website. Follow Your Stories on social media.
The sceenshots below will help you navigate your way around this Recollect site.
Not all images are ‘Open Access.” These are usually only available in the Reading Room of the institution holding the physical papers.
If you see a title in the list and can only see one image, click on the image which will take you to the Collection page with information about that title.
Look on the right side of the screen under the image of that newspaper - there will be a Rights Status statement giving the institution where the digital images can be viewed.
1. Registration and logging in
While you can search and access a lot of content without being registered, registering on the site gives you access to extra functionality, including grouping items you have found for future reference or to share with others. There is no charge to register.
How to register:
- From the Home screen, click the Login link in the top right of the screen.
- Under Register now, type in your name and email address and click Register.
After registering, you will receive an email from Recollect with your login details and instructions on how to change the temporary password provided.
How to log in:
- Click the Login link in the top right of the screen.
- Under Login Here, type in your name and email address and click Login
Once you are registered this menu will change slightly after you are logged in, allowing you to view your History for a session, and create Collections of items.
Menu before logging in:
Menu after logging in:
Note - Home, Browse All, and Search remain the same
2. Browsing
Use the menu at the top of the home page screen to browse by Region, Title, Year
3. Searching
Search page search
To go directly to the search screen, click Search in the left navigation menu.
You can then filter your search by selecting from the options provided in the drop-down boxes below the search bar:
To display the filter options, click the downward arrow next to one of the following:
- Format
- Within data
- Search within fields
- Date
- Search For
The Search for option allows you to manage your search as AND, OR, EXACT PHRASE i.e.
- All Keywords will only return items which contain every keyword used in the search, for example, Hokowhitu AND Palmerston
- Any Keywords will return items which contain any keyword used in the search, for example, Hokowhitu OR Palmerston OR North
- Exact Phrase Match will only return items which contain all keywords in the order they were searched, for example, ‘Palmerston North’
There are various Tools available to navigate your search results. These are displayed to the left of the image when an item is selected:
Full size thumbnail
Fit to screen
Fit to width
Fit to height
Rotate 90 degrees
Zoom to 100%
Click and drag the magnifying glass from minimum to maximum
Show Text / Transcription
Show Keyword hits
Highlight keywords
Download
Add to Collection
Contact us about this
Suggest an edit to this item
Citation for this item
4. Results for a keyword search can be Previewed:
Preview an item: the page containing the keyword/s searched in the issue is displayed and the text displayed:
Click on the Preview screen (under OCR in the image) to show the full page.
Use the Tools to zoom to 100%.
Move around the page by moving the red bordered box on the bottom right preview screen (click and move to the desired part of the image).
To close this screen top: click on the X in the top right corner
5. My Collection
Use the image in the Tools to add items to “My Collection” – you have to be logged in to add items to this.
You’ll get a confirmation message every time you add an Item to your collection.
6. Using My Collection
Click on the My Collection icon in the Navigation Panel to view your saved Items.
7. My History
Recollect logs all the Items you view and the searches you run for a session as part of My History (this is cleared after you log out or close your browser).
View your Search History
8. Downloading images of newspaper pages
Download button (see TOOLS image)
Select the page you want to download
9. Citing items
Use the “Citation for this item” button (see TOOLS image)
10. Copyright and Creative Commons
Link to the Trust’s Copyright Guide
The user is responsible for ensuring their use of images abides by Copyright.
Each image has a copyright statement on the right side of the screen
As a guide for newspaper content, the Trust believes it may be reasonable to assume copyright has expired for items published more than 95 years ago, and that they can therefore be copied and republished without permission. You may share it, and post it on a blog or website. It can be modified, remixed and built upon. It can be used commercially. If reproducing this material, it is helpful to include the source.
The Creative commons statement is on the left side of the screen:
This is a basic guide, and there are other features available when searching Recollect. Please contact us if things are not working as expected.
July 2026
