Massive photographic collection on display | Taranaki Entertainment | Events, Movies and TV Guide for Taranaki

A vast collection of historic photographs of Taranaki people is on show in a library near you.
Digital screens are being installed this week in the libraries at Waitara, Inglewood, Opunake and Eltham, and the Percy Thomson Gallery in Stratford.  Each screen will display a selection of 25 images from the Swainson/Woods Collection.
Viewers are being encouraged to contribute information about the images if they recognise the people or occasions depicted, and can do so by writing in books provided at each venue or by contacting Puke Ariki.
The two New Plymouth-based studios had a Taranaki-wide customer base. Spanning eight decades from 1923 until the 1990s, the collection features the photographs of individuals and families, weddings, clubs, local businesses, community events and candid photographs of social events.
The collection is one of the largest of its kind in New Zealand. Presently it numbers at 85,000 processed images. The entire collection could reach over 125,000 once the cataloguing work has been completed.
This ongoing digital exhibition project is made possible by generous support from the Taranaki Electricity Trust. It will be regularly updated, enabling the Taranaki community an opportunity to engage with images from this unique collection. 
The Swainson/Woods collection was gifted to Puke Ariki in 2005, and now that the first steps of cleaning and re-housing the material are complete, the majority of the collection is searchable and new images are added every month and available on Puke Ariki’s website www.pukeariki.com