Keystrokes Per Minute Podcast episodes can also be found on Spotify and Apple Podcast, search for ‘Keystrokes per Minute’ or ‘StorycollectiveNZ’, made possible by Wellington Access Radio 106.1FM.
Trailer for the Wellington Access Radio broadcast
Introducing the Keystrokes Research Team members
Episode 1 : The role of Education, Part 1
Interviewees tell us about their upbringing, their experiences of secondary education, and the impactful influence of parents and teachers, on subject choices, and future pathways to employment.
Episode 2: The role of Education, Part 2
In this episode we hear interviewees’ stories of discrimination and struggles with bias, that girls and young women had to overcome, to gain an education.
Episode 3: Life in the Typing Pool, Part 1
In this episode we hear about all the different pathways that led typists to getting their first job in the Public Service typing pools. Many interviewees remember their first few days and what the expectations were, their new colleagues and interesting characters found in and outside the typing room. .
Episode 4 Life in the Typing Pool, Part 2
In this episode we hear stories about the day-to-day operations of the typing pool, the physical layout, how the work was submitted, normally via a supervisor or head typist; how it was then distributed to the typists, whose job it was to ensure quality, and how documents were returned to the initiator. We will also learn some of the ingenious ‘tricks of the trades’ that typists used to cover up any mistakes.
We end this episode with something different, an in-studio interview with NZ writer & poet, Maggie Rainey-Smith.
Episode 5 Life in the Typing Pool, Part 3
In this episode we hear stories of where interviewees’ careers progressed to, whether they stayed in the typing pool moving into senior or supervisory roles, whether they moved into other areas of Govt work, or left the Public Service all together. Then we put the spotlight on the only typing pool that still exists today, that of the Medical Typists and Transcriptionists in District Health Boards across the country.
Episode 6 The Impact of Technology
In this episode we delve into the evolution of typewriter technology, the introduction of computers, and what impact that had on our interviewees. They regale us with the excitement and difficulties of new technology being implemented, and how swiftly dictaphone recorders replaced Shorthand dictation.
Episode 7 The Public Service & Women’s Work
In this episode we hear about what it was like to work for the NZ Public Service, how the standards, bureaucracy, and culture shaped the working lives of many typists, and then take a broader view of women’s work through the eras.
Link to article referenced at 45:55 ‘How Could Central Government Better Respond to Sexual Harm in the Public Service?’ written by Carrie Buckmaster, in 2018 for Policy Quarterly https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/pq/article/view/5150/4583
Bonus Episode : Valuing the Profession
Lifetime member and former National President of the Association of Administrative Professionals NZ, Eth Lloyd, MNZM, fills us in on the history and extensive programme of work over the last 50 years.
Bonus Episode : Govt Typists Strike
Government Typists took action in 1985, after a stalled negotiation between the PSA, the public servants union, and the State Services Commission.
In this bonus episode we hear from all sides of the strike action; PSA representative Phil Butler; Dame Margaret Bazley, the State Services Commissioner in charge of industrial relations at the time; and Head typists Mary Dooley and Lorraine Williams.
Storycollective 