CDNLAO top > CDNLAO Newsletter

• Index of this issue

No. 61,  March 2008

• Current scene
• Digital New Zealand
• National Digital Heritage Archive
• Matapihi
• Aotearoa People’s Network
• Kiwi Research Information Service
• Publications New Zealand

“The vision of the National Library is to connect New Zealanders
with information important to all aspects of their lives”

These notes cover just a selection of the many digital initiatives currently either led by or supported by the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa (NLNZ).

Current scene

The New Zealand government has been very active over the past five years in developing and implementing polices which place digital issues at the heart of its efforts to:

-    modernise New Zealand’s telecommunications infrastructure and roll out fast broadband progressively to all parts of the country and all sectors of the community;
to promote the creation and use of digital content in ways which affirm New Zealand’s identity and support its transformation into a knowledge economy;
to develop the digital literacy and skills of the population;
to take a ‘whole-of-government’ approach to making ICT the normal medium of communication between government and people.

The New Zealand Digital Strategy was launched in 2005. It posits that ‘Content’, ‘Confidence’ and ‘Connection’ are the key digital enablers. The NLNZ, as a central government agency, made a significant contribution to the thinking and drafting that went into the Digital Strategy, alongside various other key ministries and departments (particularly the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Economic Development, Minstry for Culture and Heritage, NZ Trade and Enterprise, Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, Department of Labour, Department of Internal Affairs, State Services Commission, and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet).

The Government has worked closely with local authorities, business and communities to make the Digital Strategy a tool for the achievement of economic transformation, social development and affirmation of cultural identity. The overriding aim is sustainability

Key elements of the Digital Strategy have been: the reform of New Zealand’s telecommunications infrastructure and regulatory environment; the Broadband Challenge Fund (to promote integrated infrastructure initiatives, particularly in the regions), and the Community Partnership Fund to support locally-based content development, skills training and digital applications by and for communities.

A major action deriving from the Digital Strategy was the Digital Content Strategy, which the Library developed and led – (see the note below on ‘Digital New Zealand’).

In November 2007, the government held a national ‘Digital Future Summit’, to herald the success of the Digital Strategy, but also to give strong impetus to its next phase, in which the Strategy will no longer be a ‘government strategy’ but will be ‘owned’ by businesses and communities throughout New Zealand. A ‘refreshed’ Digital Strategy, based on feedback from all sectors of the national community, will be launched in April 2008. See the website www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz.

Digital New Zealand

Digital New Zealand is a NLNZ initiative being implemented over the next two to three years.  Digital New Zealand has its origins in New Zealand’s Digital Content Strategy, released by the New Zealand government in August 2007 (www.digitalcontent.govt.nz). The initiative recognises that in the presence of millions of pages of web-based content, mass digitisation projects, and rapidly growing broadband-based video, New Zealand content will struggle to be visible and widely used without attention to discoverability. 

Managed as part of the NLNZ’s new Digital Library Directorate[*1] Digital New Zealand aims to progressively enable New Zealand communities to connect with, access and create content for digital content repositories, while improving visibility of New Zealand content for search engines.  It will enable the connecting of search layers, exposure of ‘deep web’ content in digital repositories, improve indexing of non-digital content and increase utilisation of open standards for content digitisation and interoperability as a means of maintaining knowledge and heritage over time.

Within the framework of the Digital Content Strategy, the NLNZ has also encouraged the development of ‘creative commons’ licences for New Zealand, and it is channelling some government funding to the New Zealand arm of the World Internet Project (an international longitudinal research project studying the social impact of new digital media).

National Digital Heritage Archive

The National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA) Programme, launched in 2004, is one of the most significant projects the NLNZ has undertaken in recent years.  It was established to ensure the Library has the infrastructure and technology needed to provide ongoing access to and preservation of digital heritage collections. The Library requires a system that secures the integrity, authenticity and therefore trustworthiness of digital material deposited with the Library while integrating with other software applications that it uses to deliver digital library services. 

The NDHA Programme is a partnership between Ex Libris Group and the Library to complete the development of a world-leading digital archive.  To this end, the NDHA Programme is collaborating with an international peer review group made up of recognized leaders and innovators from library and academic communities. This group serves as an independent resource for the NDHA Programme, for the scope and design of the initiative and its compliance with emerging industry standards.

Based on functional requirements developed by the Library, Ex Libris Group is developing a standards-based, commercial digital archive and preservation software system.  The system will operate on Sun Microsystems hardware and both hardware and software will be designed to be scalable over time as the digital collections grow. 

Concurrently with the NDHA’s development, the Library is developing integration software and tools to integrate the NDHA system with the Library’s collection management systems and access products.  It is also developing improved and new business processes for ingest of digital material from publishers, donors, and the Library’s internal image and sound digitisation programmes and web-harvesting activities. 

The system will be operational for ingest, storage and access functions by the end of 2008, at which time it will be made available commercially by Ex Libris Group.  The balance of functionality, including support for digital preservation capability, will be in place by the end of 2009 - at which time it will no longer be a project but a permanent business unit within the NLNZ.

Matapihi

Hosted by the NLNZ, Matapihi lets people search New Zealand’s leading cultural heritage collections from one free website at www.matapihi.org.nz. (Matapihi means ‘the window’ in Māori, New Zealand’s indigenous language.)

Matapihi is a collaborative gateway providing access to images and multimedia from New Zealand museums, libraries, art galleries and archives. It began as a pilot project of New Zealand’s National Digital Forum (an organisation in which museums, archives, art galleries, educational institutions, libraries and government departments work together to enhance access to New Zealand’s digital culture and heritage). There are currently 14 partner organisations contributing content to the website, and other institutions continue to express interest in joining.

Since the launch of Matapihi in September 2004, the number of items available through it has recently more than doubled – currently over 110,000 items are available. Usage also continues to rise, with the number of visitors to the site in January 2008 having been almost 50% higher than at the same time last year.

Aotearoa People’s Network

The Aotearoa New Zealand People’s Network (ANZPN, or ‘People’s Network’) is about providing free access to broadband internet services in public libraries so that all New Zealanders can benefit from creating, accessing and experiencing digital content. It is funded by the Community Partnership Fund and by other government funding through the Digital Content Strategy.

The People’s Network will benefit anyone who has access to a public library – it will open up the digital world to all people and communities by giving them access to the web, providing computers and training. Libraries and their staff will also benefit as they build their skills and knowledge of the online world, becoming ‘online experts, and in turn share this knowledge with their customers.

In Phase 1 of the People's Network implementation, 34 physical libraries in 13 local government areas have been supplied with high-specification PCs, webcams, headsets, etc., and a range of applications as well as training packages for librarians.  All except one library have chosen to take advantage of the offer of a managed network which offers network speed of at least 2Mbps (symmetrical) and a large centralised Internet feed.  All libraries guarantee to provide free public access to People's Network equipment.

Applications are currently being invited for phase 2 of the programme, in which around 40 libraries may be connected.  Offers to provide public wireless networking, digitisation equipment and community content repositories are currently also being developed.

Details of the programme may be found at: http://www.peoplesnetworknz.org.nz/

Kiwi Research Information Service

The Kiwi Research Information Service (KRIS) has launched a new website at nzresearch.org.nz.  Its goals are to connect research users from around the world to research documents produced at universities, polytechnics, and other research institutions throughout New Zealand; and to encourage individual researchers to make their research available online. The service is in two parts: a harvester that gathers, validates and transforms metadata records from the contributing institutions, and the public website and web services.

The harvester gathers information about documents stored in research repositories around New Zealand, and assembles them in one database. (The original documents remain at the originating institutions, only the metadata is harvested.)  To encourage consistency and high-quality metadata, the contributing institutions have agreed to follow a set of voluntary metadata guidelines as closely as possible, though any institutions have legacy data which is accommodated as far as is practical. When the metadata is harvested, it is first validated against the guidelines, and any metadata errors and warnings are noted against the record, and made available to the repository administrators and the public. Then the metadata is transformed from its native format (unqualified Dublin Core) into an internal format so that it is consistent across all the institutions and can be used to provide services across all the harvested records.

Once the metadata is harvested, the real work of nzresearch.org.nz begins: pushing the metadata out into the wider research community through the website, by re-exporting the metadata for other services to harvest, by providing a search service that others can re-use, and through other novel channels. For example, in addition to standard ‘search and browse’ functionality, the website offers RSS feeds on all major pages. This means, for example, that a user can subscribe to an RSS feed and get updates on all the new research on a subject of interest when it is published by any of the participating institutions. Interestingly, these RSS feeds have been picked up by blog search services, and now often expose research to a new, non-academic readership which may otherwise not have found it. Another important feature of the website is the pages that describe each of the participating institutions, explaining their research role, and providing easy access to their recent and popular records. In addition to highlighting the role of each institution, these pages create an incentive for individual researchers to get their documents into their repository, and into nzresearch.org.nz, and out into the wider Internet.

Publications New Zealand

Publications New Zealand was launched in February 2008. This website (see http://publicationsnz.natlib.govt.nz/ ) provides access for all New Zealanders to the bibliographic database of the nation’s publishing and creative content. It offers information about publications including books, journals and magazines; sound recordings, music, audio books and printed music; films; maps; as well as CD-ROMs and other electronic publications. Records of all material produced by New Zealanders or with a significant level of New Zealand content are available, as are links to information about which libraries in New Zealand hold copies.

The significance of this development is that it not only provides the information to our core library user base but also pushes this information out into the public domain for all to access directly. It promotes New Zealand content to New Zealanders and the international community, raising awareness of the rich and varied content of our publishing output.

The website is bilingual: navigation options and static text content can be displayed in either Māori or English.

The NLNZ is keen to see the website develop and is encouraging users, librarians, publishers and booksellers to provide feedback on the current site and how they think it should evolve. For example, how should the Library enhance the opportunity for online users to order from New Zealand retailers and publishers? What value might there be in adding personalisation services? Can the Library make use of some Web 2.0 tools for user-generated content such as reviews and tagging? 

For further information, contact winston.roberts@natlib.govt.nz

[*1]  The National Library is in the process of reorganising its structure and services. It is also working toward the redevelopment of its main building starting in 2009.