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Help using MLCMBI

Help with searching the Māori Land Court Minute Book Index

Simple Searching
To get started, at the query form, simply type a word or words that you would expect to find in documents of interest to you.

Phrase searching
You can search for a phrase by typing in the words, separated by spaces and enclosed in double quotes. For example: “application for tribal certificate”.

People Name Search
Entering the person’s name without quotes will retrieve them in any order. For example: Albert Winterburn.

Sample Search
Formulate your query – what is it you want to find?
For example: You wish to search for any information about a land block in the Aotea district
Type in your query: aotea and click ‘Search’

Syntax operators: AND  OR  NOT
Using these operators (in upper case) can make your queries more specific. For example:

  • To search for information about a land block in the Aotea district in 1873 enter: aotea AND 1873
  • In contrast, wanganui OR otaki will return documents which contain either term.
  • Searching for aotea NOT wanganui will narrow the search to documents containing the word ‘aotea’ but not the word ‘wanganui’.

Searching by Date:
Simply edit the ‘Date’ range boxes at the bottom of the search screen to limit your search to particular years.

Searching using zones or fields:
The search page provides several fields or ‘zones’ which can be selected to make your search more specific:

  • District
  • Judge
  • Place
  • Tangata
  • Land Block Details

You can restrict your search to any of the zones by clicking the check boxes on the search screen. For example: in the first search box enter your keywords and click on ‘All’ for your zone button, then in the second search box you can restrict your search to say, cases heard by Judge Ward, by putting ‘ward’ in the search box and clicking on ‘Judge’ for your zone button.

There are three additional zones that can be searched by using the field name followed by a space then colon then space and the search term.

  • Type (Case details e.g. Restrictions)
  • Book (the Maori Land Court Minute Book referred to)
  • Reel (refers to the microfilm reel number held at the University of Auckland’s Library)

To search for cases where details of restrictions were noted enter:
type : restrictions
To search for records from the Maori Land Court Minute Book Wellington No.13 enter:
book : “Wellington MB No.13”
Note that you need to put double quotes around the book details so that it will be searched as a phrase.

Search results display:

  • Records can be be displayed either by Score (relevance) or Date (Earliest or Latest).
  • Records are displayed 25 at a time. Use ‘Load more records’ at the bottom of the results page to see more.
  • The complete index record is retrieved by clicking on the title of the document. The record will display in a new browser tab.