This major digitisation project will describe, digitise and make available online the papers of Sir Donald McLean (1820-1877).
The digitisation project includes:
- scanning 150 reels of microfilm, which contain approximately 90,000 pages of handwritten manuscript items, over half of which are letters to and from McLean
- double keyboarding 50 volumes of transcripts of the English-language letters and journals to enhance searching within the collection
- integrating the scans of roughly 3,000 letters written in te reo Māori by Māori to McLean with new transcripts and translations of these letters, through a partnership with the Tainui Endowed College
- creating a new keyword-searchable web interface to host the digitised material.
The McLean Papers Digitisation Project is due to be launched in the second half of 2008.
About the McLean Papers
Sir Donald McLean was an administrator, runholder, politician, provincial superintendent and acted as Crown's Protector of Aborigines, Native Land Purchase Commissioner and Minister of Native Affairs.
Sir Donald McLean biography – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography website
McLean's papers are held in the Alexander Turnbull Library's Manuscript Collection. The McLean Papers are a large and frequently used manuscript collection, and are arguably the most important single group of papers relating to 19th-century race relations in New Zealand.
