The Community Archive was developed over a decade ago by Archives New Zealand as a hub for archival organisations to manage and showcase their collection-level descriptive records.
Earlier this year Archives New Zealand closed the hub, citing low usage, the increase in catalogues provided by institutions on their own websites, and the cost and difficulty of maintaining a platform with software that is out of date and no longer being serviced.
To replace this, Archives New Zealand has created a new directory of community-held archival collections and this is now available at this link: https://archives.govt.nz/search-the-archive/researching/directory-of-community-archives
The directory does not contain the previous level of information (for the reasons outlined above) but it does contain the organisations’ names, locations and web addresses. There is also a map so that people can browse by location if they would like to.
The old Community Archive website has been archived as part of the New Zealand Web Archive. You can access the site in full here: https://natlib-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1s57t7d/NLNZ_ALMA21327782220002836. The Community Archive website will remain ‘live’ and available until 4 May 2020, after which time it will be turned off.