Auckland Library Heritage Trust appreciated receiving this kind letter from the Going West board:
Dear Trustees,
On behalf of the Going West board and myself, I’m writing to express our gratitude for your support of the archiving project. Your grant of $23,000 not only made a direct and positive impact on the project itself, but also qualified the project for partnership funding from the Lotteries Environment and Heritage fund, which operates within the Department of Internal Affairs.
The project was a long and difficult one. Over a couple of years, I described hundreds of audio files, thousands of paper documents and something in the region of 20,000 photographs. This mahi has enabled Auckland Libraries to make the collection discoverable on Kura, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections online catalogue. That is an ongoing project in itself, but at the time of writing, all of the audio is available, and a large portion of the photography.
It was extremely gratifying to learn from Auckland Libraries that they started receiving access requests for the material within hours of our public announcement at the end of May, and that there has been a steady stream of these requests since. The story of the archive has also been picked up by the online music journal Audio Foundation (who were fascinated that a literary festival had such a strong music component), and I was also fortunate to be interviewed in a prime spot on bFM. Both Going West Trust and Auckland Libraries have continued to promote the archive through various social media platforms including a podcast and a short film and very much appreciate the ALHT’s promotion on your website too.
All this amounts to an extremely good outcome for the literary community of Aotearoa, for Tāmaki Makaurau and for Going West itself, which is now celebrating our 30th year of operation. None of it would have been possible without your generous support, so – again – thank you.
Ngā mihi nui,
James Littlewood
