Search Help

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision's online catalogue is powered by Supplejack, DigitalNZ's tool for aggregating, searching, and sharing metadata records.

Here are some tips on using the catalogue.

Search Basics

Do a simple search of the collections by entering your search terms and keywords into the search box, then click 'Go.'

This will produce a broad result, which can then be limited by media type: Film and Video, Audio, Book, Poster, Still or Ngā Taonga website.

By default, only those items available online will be shown. If there are no available records, you may widen your search by using the Availability filter on the left and selecting 'All Records'.

To further narrow down your search you may filter your search by year , place of production , or genre . Once you have chosen your filters, select 'Apply Filters' to apply these filters to your search.

If you know the reference number or title of the item you’re interested in, just enter these into the search box – e.g. F7935 for Goodbye Pork Pie or 16232 for the 18/05/1994 edition of Morning Report.

When searching for a Māori word or phrase, macrons will be included. For example searching for 'Maori' will find both Maori and Māori.

Please note that when you click on a catalogue item it will open in a new browser tab, keeping your current search results in the original tab.

Searching by Source – The Former Film Archive or Sound Archives Collections

Should you wish to narrow your search to only items from the former Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero collection or only items from the former New Zealand Film Archive collection you may do so using the Source search filter.

To search only the former Sound Archives collection choose 'Sound Collection' as your source filter, to search only items from the former Film Archive collection choose 'Film and Video Collection' as your source filter.

Clearing your Search

To start a new search, simply click the 'Clear' button.

Exact Phrases

If you know the person, place or search term you are looking for you can search for it by using double quotation marks – e.g. "film archive."

Fuzzy Search

If you do not get enough results from your search, try using fuzzy search by putting a tilde (~) after your term. Fuzzy searching will find a word even if it is misspelled.

use ~ after a word to mean "similar to" – e.g. whanganui~
use ~ after a phrase to find words within a certain distance of each other – e.g. "angel table"~5

Boolean Search

Use AND, OR, NOT and parentheses to refine your searches.

Use AND to get results that include all your search terms – e.g. salt AND pepper will retrieve only results that contain both of these words
Use OR to get results that include at least one of your search terms – e.g. Auckland OR Tāmaki
Use NOT to exclude unwanted search terms – e.g. Whanganui NOT river will retrieve results that include "Whanganui," but not "river"
Use parentheses ( ) to group search terms – e.g. (cat OR dog) AND Christchurch
Exact phrases and parentheses can also be used with Boolean Searches – e.g. "Whanganui River" AND (Cat OR Dog).

Favourites

To build a list of your favourite items:

Select your Favourites by clicking on the star icon on each item’s record.
Once you have chosen your Favourites, select the 'View Favourites' star icon near the top left of the page.
You can email your Favourites list to yourself or another email address of your choice by clicking the 'Email List' beside the 'Favourites' heading.
If you would like more information about any of the items on your list click the 'Request Information' button for each item you would like to enquire to our staff about, then fill out the Request form that displays to the right of your Favourites list. Our staff will get back to you with more information.

Accessing Material

Many catalogue items have 'Viewing locations' included in the item information in the sidebar. This field identifies if you can access material from the collection at our offices in Wellington.

While we try to make as much of the collection accessible as possible, it is not possible to have viewing copies of everything in the collection, which includes many undigitised items on obsolete media formats (learn more about preservation work needed before items are available for viewing). Therefore some catalogue entries may say that there’s no viewing copy available.

In some cases, we may be able to make special access arrangements for these items – this is dependent on the preservation status of the item, and securing permissions from the rights holders. Please contact us with the item’s reference number to enquire about viewing possibilities.