Story: Archives

Business records form one of the significant collection areas of the Hocken Collections at the University of Otago. Archivist Helen McLagen is cataloguing Briscoes telegrams dating from the 1930s. At the time Briscoes was a hardware supplier. The telegrams were written in code, which would have stymied any attempts by rivals to find out what Briscoes was up to. However, most of the telegrams held by the Hocken just contained corrections or editions to financial reports, so any lucky code-breakers would probably have come away disappointed. 

The cataloguing work was made possible by a $881,000 lottery grant and additional funds from the University of Otago. The extra four staff employed with these funds catalogued about 90,000 items, making them more accessible to researchers.