How to use Te Ara

Te Ara home page

Here’s what you can access from the home page:

On all pages

Te Ara icon

At top left of each page. This returns you to the site’s home page.

Search box

To the right of the Te Ara logo. Type your search term into the box and click Search. This will search all stories.

Browse Te Ara

Beneath the search box are various categories you can browse Te Ara by: Stories A–Z, Te Reo Māori, Sections, Keywords, and Your Stories. Clicking these will open an interactive browser to access all the stories, grouped in various ways.

Breadcrumb

At top left, under the Te Ara logo, the 'breadcrumb' trail shows the page's place within Te Ara's sections and stories. For example: Economy and the City › Transport › Ferries › Page 2. From here you can also get to:

  • Te Ara home page (click the 'house' icon)
  • the home page of the section you are exploring
  • the home page of the subsection you are exploring
  • the home page ('The Short Story) of the entry you are exploring.

On the left of the page

  • A contents list of the pages within each story.
  • A link to view a gallery of all images and media that accompany each story.
  • A link to send in your own personal story to Te Ara.
  • Print this page: Print the page you are viewing, including images and captions.
  • Print this story: Print all the pages in the story you are viewing. This does not include the Short Story, images or captions.
  • 'To related links' takes you the bottom of the page, where you'll find links to other stories in Te Ara, and stories on other Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage websites, that relate to the page you're viewing.

At the bottom of the page

  • Related to this page: links to other stories in Te Ara, and stories on other Manatū Taonga websites, that relate to the page you're viewing.
  • Te Ara What's the Story logo: This takes you to the Te Ara home page.
  • About this site: gives information on Te Ara.
  • Contact us: contact details, including an email address to send us a message.
  • Sitemap: this sets out all the content of Te Ara. You can go directly to any place on the site from this map.
  • Copyright information: sets out Te Ara's copyright policy.
  • Glossary: an alphabetical list of common Māori words used in the stories gives their full and varied meanings.
  • Disclaimer.
  • Links to our Twitter, Facebook and Flickr pages, and to Signposts – Te Ara's blog.
  • A box to enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter, Te Ara Hiko.
  • Te Ara's Creative Commons licence
  • Links to Manatū Taonga's other websites.

Exploring the stories

Each story or article contains text, images and clips, and other material such as biographies and further reading. As you explore, you can move back and forth between the text and these different resources.

The story home page – The Short Story

The story home page includes an introduction to the story, the author's name, and a short, easy-to-read summary of the story.

The Full Story

This is the story proper, and will have two or more pages of text, accompanied by images and media.

Other story features

As well as essential information, on the story pages you will find:

  • Footnotes. Direct quotations have footnotes. Click on the footnote number for the full reference at the bottom of the page. Then click Back to return to the text.
  • Related stories from Te Ara. There are frequently links to other stories in the same topic area.
  • Related stories from the 1966 Encyclopaedia. This takes you to related topics in the previous encyclopedia of New Zealand.
  • How to cite this page. This is in a yellow bar at the bottom of the page. It gives the title, author, and when the story was last updated.
  • Glossary. A link to to the glossary is at the bottom of the page. The glossary is a list of common Māori words used in the stories, with their full and varied meanings. When they appear in the text, they are underlined with dots, and the meaning will appear when your mouse hovers over the word. They are also linked to the glossary page.

Exploring images and media

There are different ways to access the images:

  • Click on an image.
  • Click on the 'Images and media' tab on the top right.
  • In the 'All images and media in this story' gallery, click any image.

To navigate forwards and backwards:

  • Click on the banner of small images above the main image.
  • Click the arrows above and below the main image.
  • Click the small images beneath the caption.

To get to the story from an image:

  • Click the 'The Story' tab on the top right.
  • Click the 'To the Story' button between the next/previous arrows below the image.
  • Click on a page title in the left-hand contents bar.

Viewing grouped images

Sometimes an image on the story page links to a group of images or resources, rather than to just one. The caption will say, e.g., ‘Māori artists (1st of 3)’. 

Playing video and sound clips

You will need Flash to play a clip. If you don’t already have it, when you click on a video or sound clip you will get a message with a link for a free download of Flash.

Before you play the clip, select Slow (if you have a dial-up connection) or Fast. These buttons are at the top of the player. Your computer will remember this setting.

To play a clip

Use your mouse to operate the control buttons on the player's control panel. These are (left to right on the panel):

  • Play/Pause. Click to stop or start the clip.
  • Tracking. Move the clip forwards and backwards with this control.
  • Volume control. Slide this up or down to increase or decrease volume.
  • High/Low: this changes the quality of the video.
  • Screen size. Click this box to switch to full-screen.

The zoom tool

Some detailed maps and images have a zoom tool which magnifies part of an image.

To zoom, use your mouse on +/- buttons at the base of the image, or slide the bar between the +/- buttons to zoom in and out.

When you have zoomed in, you can:

  • click and drag on the image to move around it
  • click on the buttons on the edge of the image to move in that direction
  • Double-click on an area to zoom in and center the view on that spot
  • use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

To reset the view, click on the button in the top left.

On some images there is a green button in the top right to view the image full screen. When in full screen, click the red button in the top right or press escape to exit full screen.