The Treasury’s new manager hopes to see visitor numbers increase at the archive museum by more than double.
Establishing events and cataloguing the historic collection would also be top priority, she said.
Danielle Campbell, 28, has started at The Treasury Research Centre and Archive in Thames, and will be responsible for volunteers, operations, and collections management.
Miss Campbell grew up in New Plymouth, and completed her undergraduate degree in history at Otago University.
She went on to backpack around Europe and Asia, and lived in London before returning to Wellington three years ago to complete her Masters in Museum and Heritage Studies.
Since then, she has completed a collections photography internship at Te Papa, has worked for the New Zealand Police Museum researching and writing about significant objects in their collection, and for the past year was stationed with Wellington City Council’s heritage team, working on heritage interpretation and researching heritage buildings.
“I really wanted to come back to something like this,” she told The Profile.
“Doing research into [The Treasury], I was really fascinated by all of the facets of the organisation.
“They have the oral history group, the publishing of the True Tales books, and a really amazing collection of documentary heritage here, from maps and books, to letters and photographs, and some objects as well.”
The Treasury, on Queen St, was seeing around 35 visitors a month, Miss Campbell said, and she hoped to see that number increase to 80.
“The Treasury was always, at least for the past few years, open on a Friday,” she said.
“We started having to close on Fridays last year because of Covid, and volunteers numbers dropped.
“All I’m really wanting to do is reopen on that Friday, and I think we’ll be able to do that within the next month or two.”
Another goal was to catalogue and digitise the collections, to make it more accessible to researchers.
“Stage one is basically getting all of our books and photographs catalogued into a collection management system, so that when people come in, we can search everything and find relevant material for them.”
Miss Campbell also ran two events at The Treasury as part of the Thames Heritage Festival on March 13: ‘Create Your Own Time Capsule’ and ‘True Tales of The Treasury Guided Tour’.
“The aim of the time capsule workshop was to get kids thinking about collection and preservation, and I brought the kids into our archive to see The Treasury’s very own time capsule that’s not to be opened until 2114,” she said.
“A big goal of mine is to increase the number of events and public programmes we can offer and engage with as many other organisations as we can.”
DETAILS: The Treasury is open Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 11am until 3pm. Ph 07-868 8827 or visit www.thetreasury.org.nz for more information.
By KELLEY TANTAU
Danielle Campbell, 28, has taken on the role of manager at The Treasury in Thames. Photo: KELLEY TANTAU
