Recollections Radio show

Recollections Radio is a partnership with Otago Access Radio, and is a weekly one-hour show, airing on Mondays from 11am-12pm on OAR 105.4FM and 1575AM, with a repeat broadcast on OAR on Tuesday evenings at 10pm. The programme is hosted by Jill Bowie and Kay Mercer, curators for Dunedin Public Libraries' digital archive, Scattered Seeds, and is aimed at a mature audience who enjoy interesting interviews, a range of music styles, and chat about current topics of the day.  The programme is a means for the Libraries to connect with people in their homes in a non-digital way, while also inviting members of the Dunedin community to contribute stories of their own, which might be added to the Scattered Seeds archive to help build the story of Dunedin through it's people.

In 2020, Dunedin Public Libraries conducted a survey aimed at older residents of Dunedin who enjoy listening to the radio - for company, for information or just to stay connected to the world. Responses to the survey led to the outline of a radio show, designed to connect with members of the Dunedin community who are house-bound or living alone, and in particular those who are not connected digitally with the Libraries. The Libraries felt, after lockdown, that there was a gap in services for the older, non-digital community, and also noticed how a lot of older folk have their radios on in their homes throughout the day, and for some this is their main connection with society. Out of this research, Recollections Radio was born. From the survey responses, we knew that our potential audience enjoyed history and culture, wanted to hear interesting interviews and discussions. I felt this meshed very well with the ‘Save our Stories’ project we are running for Scattered Seeds – collecting and preserving the stories of Dunedin. It was clear we needed to contact older members of the community to gather their stories, but many of our older community would not be excited by a ‘digital archive’, nor would they be likely to connect via the community portal of the archive. The Radio show gave the Libraries the means to connect with those older people and their stories – a means to invite them to contribute, a forum to share stories with them, and a way to get them excited about the digital archive. It also serves as an impetus to record oral histories of people of Dunedin, while at the same time providing those ‘interesting interviews’ that our audience had requested be part of the programme. The Libraries secured funding from the New Zealand Libraries Partnership Programme for two years of 1-hour weekly shows, and Recollections Radio's first broadcast was aired on 14th February 2022. 

Interviews featured on the programme are subsequently added to the Scattered Seeds archive as oral history files, and include such diverse subjects as the Dunedin Light Railway Trust, Cinemas of Dunedin, the Paul S Allen photographic collection, and the formation of the Dunedin Lebanese community.

Podcasts are also available to listen to on demand.

New Zealand’s library system COVID-19 recovery
The Government is entrusting the National Library to lead and support COVID-19 recovery work across New Zealand’s library system, especially in public libraries, with a funding package of $58.8 million, over two to four years. The New Zealand Libraries Partnership Programme (NZLPP) will support librarians and library services to be retained in NZ libraries and assist them to support community recovery.