Auckland Regional Office reduces access to services
We're reducing access to some services in our Auckland Regional Office for four weeks, starting on the 7th of February. Learn why we need to do this and which services will be affected.
The Auckland Regional Office is temporarily reducing access to some services for four weeks, starting from 7 February. This will include the closure of the reading room, including appointments, and restriction of access to some services. In addition to public notices, website and social media updates, an autoreply will be received of these non-contact measures via Reftracker and Auckland.Archives@dia.govt.nz.
The decision follows a sustained period of Tāmaki Makaurau kaimahi working and living within the constraints and pressures of COVID-19 increased alert levels, and increased numbers of research and digitisation requests. This has led to a large backlog of requests that could not be processed during Alert Levels 3 and 4 in late 2021, and which is difficult to clear in the current environment. We have therefore decided to temporarily reduce services in order to focus our resources on clearing the backlog.
The recent move to the red setting of the COVID-19 Protection Framework, as part of the public health response to Omicron, has heightened the need to limit the spread of an outbreak. The health, safety and wellbeing of Archives New Zealand kaimahi and those they interact with are Te Tari Taiwhenua Internal Affairs’ priority. We accept that reduced access will impact on research, but health and safety is most important at this time.
Auckland staff will remain working full-time on priority work including working through the high volume of enquiries and requests for digitisation on demand.
Full services are intended to return from 7 March, subject to a review on 2 March. Thank you for your understanding and patience at this time.
Nā māua noa, nā
Stephen Clarke, Chief Archivist – Kaipupuri Matua
Taila Roth, Regional Archivist Auckland