The Lab.

Experiments on big public archives of New Zealand writing, one archive per issue. A side project of willedmonds.com.

Issue 02 · open

The Papers

What New Zealanders put in the newspapers, recovered from the Papers Past archive.

01 Hearts Vacant → Matrimonial notices from the New Zealand press, 1870 to 1945. Every notice links to the scan of the page it ran on.

Issue 01 · closed 2026

The Official Record

Four projects using the government's own records: 56,080 press releases, 918,544 official information requests and every change to the public-service department lists since 1988.

01 Half-Life → Search more than 50,000 ministerial press releases to see when a phrase first appeared, when it peaked and when it disappeared. Every result links back to the releases it came from. 02 The Reading Age of Power → An eye test built from readability scores for about 55,000 ministerial press releases. Compare governments, years and ministers, then set the reading level to see what comes into focus. 03 The Waiting Room → Ten years of official information statistics show which agencies answer on time, which use nearly all of the 20 working days and where most late replies come from. The data here runs to December 2024. 04 The Renaming of the State → A map of every renaming, merger and abolition in the public-service department lists since 1988. See what survived, what came back under another name and how the vocabulary changes with the government.