Around the middle of 2011 we received a request from translator Martha Ruszkowski to translate a Tuatara article into Ukrainian. Initially we were a little surprised by the request, but Martha explained that the article relates to her own professional interests, and that there would be readers interested from Ukraine.

A quick search for Martha's other work reveals she is busy translating content into Ukrainian and Belarusian on various topics from New Zealand gambling to Australian Botanic Gardens and beyond.

Permission was granted and a few weeks later Martha replied with the link to her Ukrainian translation of Plant Pirates by Miriam A Aiken. I think it's great to see NZETC collections reaching new audiences this way.

We are very pleased to announce three new collections:

• Elsdon Best Published Works Collection
• Victoria University Student Magazine collection
• Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition (VUWAE) Reports

Elsdon Best is widely known for his work as an ethnographer writing about Māori life and culture. This collection contains 15 of his works ranging from Māori Agriculture to Religion and the Māori concept of time. Some of Best's works were originally published by the Dominion Museum, where Best was employed, as a part of the Dominion Museum Bulletin series.

The Hilltop Literary Paper is the first publication in our student magazine collection. Hilltop contains works from some well known New Zealand authors such as James K. Baxter and Charles Brasch. We also plan to make available:

• The Spike
  
• Arachne
  
• SMAD

These magazines discuss student life from 1902 through to the 1950's and cover important events and activities throughout each trimester, for example: capping ceremonies and social and sports events. Student reaction to world wide events, such as the world wars, is also discussed.

For over 50 years Victoria University of Wellington has been sending research expeditions to the Antarctic. The outcomes of these expeditions form the Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition (VUWAE) Reports collection. The aims of the expeditions were to research many aspects of the Antarctic environment including geology, glaciology, meteorology and biology.

It's National Poetry Day today and I'd also like to share a poem that I like from the NZETC Collections.

It's called Love poem for a Geek on Dixon Steps by Airini Beautrais, from Sport 35: Winter 2007.

The poem's title caught my eye mostly because I walk up and down Dixon Steps everyday. The poem is short and sweet, and it enticed me to read more of Airini's poems. It is the first poem in Twenty-three Love Poems, all of which I enjoyed and I hope you enjoy too.

Today is National Poetry Day so I thought I'd share my favourite poem from the NZETC collection.

When I first started at VUW, I'd recently returned from Oxford, where I'd been quite removed, physically and intellectually, from my years as an undergrad at Canterbury. One of my early tasks was assessing our collection with respect to google suite of tools. I'd not yet really had much to do with the Sport journal, but one of the pages was highly ranked for both "fucking poems" and "fucking poetry" and I instantly connected with the poem. The poem reminds me of two wonderful years I spent as part of the Canterbury Writers Group set up by the then Writer-in-Residence Bernadette Hall (whose Wikipedia entry I would later edit). For me those years were filled with poetry that was long on passion, shock value and pseudonyms but short on writing craft and life experience. We edited two anthologies (Find the Red (which ran to two printings) and Eels in a Bucket); we drank cheap red wine; we supported each other at poetry readings; we got to know the AA crowd (they were in the room immediately before us); in short we had a ball. One of my poems from the period eventually washed ashore in the School Journal, so maybe it wasn't an entirely misspent youth.

All that floods back to me when I read Short Poems About Fucking by James Brown from our Sport collection. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

stuart yeates

Kia Ora and welcome to Māori language week. The theme for this year's Māori Language week is Manaakitanga or Maori hospitality and Customs. There are several mentions of this term in our collection.

We thought we would take the opportunity to highlight some of our highly used Māori language works.

* A Dictionary of the Maori Language by Herbert W. Williams.

* Nga kōrero a Reweti Kohere Mā by Te Ohorere Kaa and Wiremu Kaa.

* 28 Maori Battalion by J. F. Cody.

These three works are in our ten most accessed items for the past 6 months. We are very pleased to see Maori language works being highly used in our collection.

If your currently studying Te Reo Maori you may like to use the 'Māori-English / English-Māori parallel texts only' search function to show works with translations between the two languages.

We are also looking forward to publishing another Māori work 'Te Whakatuwheratanga o Te Tumu Herenga Waka' or The Opening of Te Tumu Herenga Waka. Te Tumu Herenga Waka is the meeting house at Victoria University of Wellington and this work discusses its founding and the Epa, Poupou and Heke found inside.

We are happy to announce that selected poems on the Best New Zealand Poems Website are now available as audio files. Each poem has been recorded by the poet themselves. The audio files correspond to poems selected in The Best of Best New Zealand Poems, an anthology now available from Victoria University Press, edited by Bill Manhire and Damien Wilkins. We have been working with the International Institute of Modern Letters to make these recordings accessible. We hope to have the remaining poems available by mid 2011. You will find audio for many well known New Zealand poets and we hope you enjoy being able to listen to each poem as well as read it.