Online Cenotaph

Online Cenotaph is an online war memorial for New Zealand service personnel, which is searchable by name, place, troopship. Indenting to create both a military record and a social history record, Online Cenotaph records feature primary sources including military embarkation rolls, New Zealand Defence Force personnel files and secondary research, including public contributions. Supplementary information is added to entries from sources including Births Deaths and Marriages, the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre, arcchival newspapers, and district council cemetery records. Additionally, members of the public are able to submit correction requests through the website. Other features of Online Cenotaph include digital remembrance poppies, which can be lain on a service person's record, More than 160 museum volunteers have contributed to Online Cenotaph over the years, either online or on-site at Pou Maumahara. The most common users of Online Cenotaph are family history researchers. as well as genealogists and amateur historians. ==History==

Establishment The Cenotaph database was first established in 1996. The project was established due to the passing of the Auckland War Memorial Museum Act 1996, which renewed the museum's commitment to its role as a war memorial. Established to allow researchers, veterans and family members to explore the records and stories of service personnel from World War I and World War II, the database was created by the information services section of the museum research library for the armory, originally as a basic textual Roll of Honour. By 1999, the database had been expanded to include entries for personnel who served during other armed conflicts, including the South African War, Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation, Malayan Emergency, Korean War, Vietnam War, Falklands War and peacekeeping missions. In May 2014, the first Cenotaph-specific roles were created at museum, Prior to 2015, the database was known as either Cenotaph or Cenotaph Database. The first crowdsourcing project instigated by Auckland War Memorial Museum, the website became open to community submissions after extended requests from communities and families over years to add additional information and resources to records. In 2014, the crowdsourcing platform was originally intended to be a separate service named Cenotaph Community. In its first year, the relaunched Online Cenotaph attracted between 150,000 and 200,000 monthly views. The kiosk travelled across the country. From October 2015, Online Cenotaph began collaborating with the University of Minnesota on the Measuring the Anzacs project, investigating long-term health outcomes of New Zealand service personnel, by enlisting volunteers to transcribe medical records from World War I. On 21 October 2016, Online Cenotaph's physical location was moved to Pou Maumahara, the Memorial Discovery Centre at Auckland War Memorial Museum. Recent developments In 2020 during the lockdowns for the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand, digital volunteers, of whom included museum volunteers and visitor hosts, worked on transcription projects, including archival documents, memorial plaques and headstones, leading to the creation of over 15,000 new cenotaph records. From 2020 to 2021, Online Cenotaph collaborated with Archives New Zealand, who allowed collection technician Dan Millar access to the archives in Wellington, allowing Millar to digitise over 200 archival sources to add to Online Cenotaph records. As of December 2025, over 265,000 service people have Online Cenotaph records. ==References==