A project under way to preserve the prized possession of the nearly 80-year-old association - a collection of 185 portraits of early settlers in the area - was about 60% complete, Helen Stead said.
And the one-vote majority at the group's 2015 annual general meeting that kept the association alive was at a time when the group had not begun its mission to ``deframe, copy, and reframe'' the portraits.
A ``marriage made in heaven'' between the association and Tourism Waitaki, now meant duplicates of the majority of portraits - both photographs and paintings - were publicly displayed at the recently opened Whitestone City in Oamaru, but the association's collaboration with the Waitaki District Archive ensured the preservation of the original portraits and allowed the project to continue.
As the collection was stored and digitised, work had begun to create brief biographical entries for each of the individuals featured.
And while the effort to preserve the portraits was more or less on track - some logistical issues remained about reproducing the convex picture glass used in some of the old oval frames, for example - the effort to produce biographies had really only just begun.
Waitaki District Archives curator of archives Christopher Meech, who had provided technical assistance to the project from the beginning, said the project to produce biographies for those featured in the portraits was about five or six months under way.
``It's a really interesting project, because for the association it's a change in focus,'' he said.
Rather than focusing on the Early Settlers Hall as a place to display the portraits, the project required ``citizen historians'' to unearth some dates, names and stories for people who so far remained unknown.
``Some of them [portrait biographies], it's quite straight forward, because they are well-known local personalities,'' Mr Meech said. ``Others, they are unidentified ... that's a challenge.''
He said there had been no formal deed of gift yet, but he was anticipating ownership of the collection to be transferred to the archives once the whole collection had been duplicated, reframed and preserved both physically and digitally in the archive.
Tourism Waitaki general manager Jason Gaskill said he was ``extremely pleased'' to have the collection's duplicates, in their original frames, on display at the new Harbour St attraction - the arrangement with the association filled ``a desire on both sides to ensure as much information was made available as widely as possible''.
``We are proud to be working with the North Otago Early Settlers Association to ensure that the portraits will be protected and available for view,'' he said.
Some of the collection had been donated to Toitu Otago Settlers Museum, Mrs Stead said.
