The project, funded by an $881,000 lottery grant and topped up with additional funding from the University of Otago, had allowed the university-owned library to employ three to four extra archivists annually, archives and manuscripts curator Anna Blackman said yesterday.
They had delved into boxes and catalogued an estimated 90,000 items, including 23,000 photographs, she said.
While she said she was sorry the project was ending, having the additional staff had been a luxury.
Back-cataloguing would continue in some form next year, but Ms Blackman said staff intended to "take a breather" for a while, then look at how best to continue the work.
The material catalogued as part of the project includes books, personal papers, documents, photographs, newspaper clippings, clothing, stained glass window designs and architectural drawings.
One of the largest collections is loose photographs and albums previously held at the Moray Pl public library which include panoramic shots of central Dunedin taken in the 1860s.
There are also scrapbooks of early letters collected by Hocken founder Dr Thomas Hocken, the personal papers of globe-trotting nurse Dunedin Louise Sutherland, registers from Dunedin company Robinson's Pawn Brokers, the stained glass window design collection from Millers Studio, books and photographs about pioneering New Zealand plastic surgeon Henry Pickerill, and photographs and product catalogues from Dunedin stove manufacturer Shacklocks.
One of project archivist Helen McLagan's tasks has been cataloguing business records from Briscoes, which in its heyday was a chain of large hardware supply stores with a head office in London.
Like other major businesses of the day which had to relay information via telegrams, Briscoes used a secret code so it could transact its business in private, she said.
However, rather than containing commercially-sensitive news about prices or products, most of the telegrams appeared to be additions or corrections to financial reports.
