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For six years DigitalNZ has been digging up, collecting and curating NZ’s digital ‘treasure’ to make it available and useful.

Head of DigitalNZ Andy Neale tells us about the platform, what it offers NZ creatives and its new project to link 'people and places'.

"NZ has billions of dollars worth of digital assets, but we haven’t yet cracked how to best deal with that across both our real-world and digital environments… 

“How do we best make this digital wealth available to NZ creators, researchers and learners so they can make the most of what past generations have gifted to us.”

Tell us a bit about your background.

I actually started out in marketing as an undergraduate. I was messing about with computers from an early age and back in the 90s found myself as the go to person for web stuff in a marketing department. After studying computer science and information systems design and a stint overseas I moved back to NZ in the mid-2000s, and landed at the National Library. I still find it an incredible environment to work in, pushing the boundaries of technology and improving the way New Zealanders can access and use our rich stores of content and knowledge.

How did you become involved in DigitalNZ – what keeps you involved?

I joined the National Library as its first web manager. When the opportunity came along to be the technical lead for DigitalNZ, and help create a new platform for connecting New Zealand’s digital material, I didn’t even think twice. We were breaking new ground. No one in the world had attempted this at a country level before.

I’m proud of the work that’s been done so far, but there is so much more to do. The way we interact in society is changing every day in response to evolving technology, and it’s changing what we expect of our public institutions. Libraries, museums, galleries, archives etc. are such tremendous powers of good in our communities. What keeps me involved is the idea that we are passing the baton to the next generation where digital is the norm. NZ has billions of dollars worth of digital assets, but we haven’t yet cracked how to best deal with that across both our real-world and digital environments… How do we best make this digital wealth available to NZ creators and researchers and learners so they can make the most of what past generations have gifted to us. Part of me fears that it’s a lifetime of work!

Tell us a bit about DigitalNZ

The core of www.digitalnz.org is a search and data service. Our tagline is, working to “make New Zealand’s digital content easy to find, share and use”. Essentially, we work with organisations to collect their NZ digital material and bring it together into a single service. For example, material like NZ photos, videos, audio recordings, newspaper clippings and documents .

Sounds a lot like an internet search engine, right? Kind of, except we act like a curator, picking out specific digital collections, and weaving them together. Much of the material we’ve collected over the years has been locked away in databases and catalogues that you can’t easily find online. We like to help dig up this buried NZ digital treasure. People can then go to the DigitalNZ website and collect together their favourites, picking though 27 million items from our 150 partners, knowing that the good stuff is closer to the surface.

If there is something completely unique to DigitalNZ, it’s the idea that all the information we collect from different sources, is then shared back as an open data service. What this means is that other websites, mobile apps, and software applications can easily access the database where we store all the collected information. A good example is the recently launched service at www.pond.co.nz. It’s a service portal for NZ educators, that includes the ability for NZ teachers to find material for use in the classroom. DigitalNZ does all the behind the scenes work to collect NZ material and shares the data, so that teachers can find NZ material without leaving the Pond website.

What combination of people and resources are involved?

We have a fantastic team of six. Our work ranges from harvesting the different databases from the organisations we work with, to advising on digitisation issues such as copyright and reuse, to maintaining the technical infrastructure of DigitalNZ. We really value working with people with multiple skills and talents, so our people often wear different creative and technical hats.

What opportunities does it provide for creatives and arts organisations in NZ?

One of our priorities is to seek out and provide access to open content. This means collections that are openly licensed, either through a Creative Commons licence or are out of copyright, and can be reused and remixed. We have a good source of material that creatives and art organisations can safely use for their own works and initiatives.

At DigitalNZ you can build sets of items, which are basically curated collections of your favourite materials. People have given us lots of feedback that sets are fun research tools for creative problem solving. We’ve recently had a number of artists using DigitalNZ to research upcoming films and works, and this has been really pleasing to see.

We also run the Mix and Mash competition, which is a great way to showcase your creative work as an artist. It’s an initiative which encourages and celebrates the reuse of openly licensed content and data.

How can they get involved?

If you are a creative person or a developer, jump on www.digitalnz.org and explore. You may have a bright idea about using DigitalNZ’s data for a new application, or you may find some digital content useful for your next project.

If your organisation has a digital collection, we’d love to hear from you and discuss how we could bring it into DigitalNZ!

DigitalNZ recently celebrated its 6th birthday. How has it evolved in the past six years?

It’s interesting that we are still true to our core of bringing together NZ’s digital material, and making it more available and useful. There is a lot to read on our history page but, if I was to pick on one specific change, it would be about skills development. I think we have seen a shift in the digital capability of New Zealanders and organisations. It can still be a big struggle for some, but there are so many more talented digital artists and technical folk in NZ now. We get to work with them on a daily basis and it’s been a real privilege over the years.

What are some recent partnerships and developments?

It was thrilling for us to bring in the online collections of Radio NZ when they were recently announced as our 150th content partner. Bringing in 150,000 new audio clips was a big milestone and it’s great to see this material now included. We are also working on a special initiative with the National Library of Singapore to take the DigitalNZ concept more widely across Asia and the Pacific.

What’s your big idea for 2014?

You can track our work programme online as it moves throughout the year, and one of the big ideas this year is something we call people and places. What we are doing is taking all the data we have collected over the past six years, and connecting it up in more interesting ways.

Think of the ability for example to pull-up a chronological list of all the different Colin McCahon works that are scattered throughout the country. Or of being able to pull-up a list of materials that relate to the location of a specific NZ film. That’s the idea we’re working on for 2014 and beyond.