Hocken Collections

Story

The Hocken Collections is a research library, historical archive and art gallery based in the New Zealand city of Dunedin. It is a library collection of national significance administered by the University of Otago.The Collections' specialist areas include items relating to the history of New Zealand and the Pacific, with specific emphasis on the Otago and Southland Regions. Open to the general public, the library is one of the country's most important historical research facilities.HistoryThe Hocken Collections is the result of the philanthropy of avid collector Dr. Thomas Hocken, who donated his private collection to the university in trust for the New Zealand public. Hocken had offered his collection to public use in 1897, but it was not until 1910 that it became generally accessible in a wing of the Otago Museum. Hocken was too ill to attend the official opening on 23 March 1910 (the 62nd anniversary of the founding of Dunedin), and died just two months later.Until 1965 the library was entirely housed in the Otago Museum. From that time its pictures collection and increasingly more of its other holdings were housed on other sites around the University of Otago's campus, the pictures being at the Central Library. In 1980 the collections were again brought together under one roof in the new Hocken Building (now renamed the Richardson Building), designed by E.J. McCoy. It soon outgrew that site and additional accommodation was secured at another site in Leith Street. It was reconsolidated on another site in 1998 in the former Otago Co-operative Dairy Company factory on Anzac Avenue, east of the main campus. In 2005 its name was changed to the 'Hocken Collections'.