Puke Ariki Museum and Library. Photo: Puke Ariki Museum and Library
Taranaki history buffs are angry the axe is hovering over opening hours at the Puke Ariki Museum and Library's research centre in New Plymouth.
They say a proposal to slash weekend hours would hit users carrying out important research.
The Taranaki Research Centre is the place to go for information on everything from family histories to iwi claims.
It holds a reference-only collection of hundreds of books, images and archives.
Visitors are helped by a small staff trained in how to use the collection.
Archaeologist and chair of Heritage Taranaki Ivan Bruce was upset the service was under threat.
"It was proposed to cut the visiting hours ... completely cut ... no visiting hours on Sunday and only half a day on Saturday which for anyone who works a nine to five day or might have kids going to sports on a Saturday it means the research centre won't be used by those people and that's most of the ratepayers."
Bruce said the district council claimed the cut was due to low visitor numbers - but could not provide figures to back this up.
He believed the real reason was that staff numbers had reduced so much that they could no longer cover the hours.
"There used to be a team leader, there used to be a senior researcher and there used to be four other researchers, now there is no project team leader, there is no senior researcher and there is only two full-time researchers.
"Those researchers provide content, digitise collections. They do all sorts of things that enable content to flow into the community and they enable content to flow into Puke Ariki which is unfortunately in a pretty sad state of affairs these days.
"It's in desperate need of revival and that comes from the research centre."
Ivan Bruce is upset the research centre may have restricted hours over the weekend. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Former Taranaki Museum director Ron Lambert helped set up Puke Ariki, where he was chief collections officer and a research officer.
He fought for the research centre to have the same hours as the library and museum so visitors could use it at any time.
"Well it's just more convenient for people to drop in at any time and to close on Sunday is ridiculous because that's the day when many people do work like this especially in the winter. It seems to me to be a step, a big step backwards."
Kate Francis was working in a quiet corner of the centre on a chapter she was contributing to a book on the lives of 19 women.
She came to the research centre to work in peace.
"For me I come up here because it's a quiet space and I can just get into the zone and get some work done. I can't really get it done at home with the kids and up here also being around this environment I can use it for research as well."
Francis said it would be a pity if weekend hours were to be cut.
Kate Francis says the centre provides a peaceful environment for writing. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Council keeping an eye on patronage
Council spokesperson Teresa Turner said the research centre's opening hours would not be changing "at the moment", but the council would be keeping an eye on how it was used before making a final decision.
She said the staffing structure of the centre had changed over time to meet demand and there had been no research team leader in place since 2014.
Turner insisted however, that there were enough staff to cover current weekend hours.
At its recent annual plan deliberations, the council decided to defer filling 15 staff vacancies and postponed a $400,000 refresh of the Taranaki Life section of the Puke Ariki Museum.
