Community libraries have an important role in collecting, preserving and promoting the local history of their areas for the benefit of the people they serve. North Shore and Waitakere City Libraries already had existing local history electronic indexes and digitised photographs that needed an online home. Rodney Library aims to index its own local papers, and in the future plans to develop a digital collection.

In 2006, the three libraries joined together and as ROWANS, established a joint project with Datacom (NZ) to make their local history photographs and indexes available online. Greenstone open-source digital library software was chosen because of its flexibility and ease of use. In late 2006 Digital Library Consulting were contracted to develop the back-end database, data entry module and the public user screens for this site in conjunction with the ROWANS-Datacom Project Team.

Local History Online brings together for the first time the digital and electronic local history collections of North Shore, Rodney and Waitakere Libraries.

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