The National Library of New Zealand's New Digital Archive
The National Library of New Zealand's New Digital Archive
August 7th, 2006: The National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Ma-tauranga o Aotearoa and Endeavor Information Systems have to design a digital archive capable of ensuring preservation and future access to the nation's digital heritage collections.
From 12 August 2006, the National Library will preserve New Zealand's digital publishing - from CD-ROMs to DVDs, music sound recordings to websites - in digital heritage.
Leading up to this partnership, the National Library has run a successful programme of digital preservation initiatives and established the National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA) Programme to design and implement a digital archive that would meet the Library's current and future needs.
Partnering with Endeavor and the National Library will be Sun Microsystems with whom both organizations have ongoing relationships. In November 2005, Sun announced the Library as a Sun Centre of Excellence for Digital Futures in Libraries, an agreement recognizing the work of the Library and it's staff at the forefront of global digital preservation endeavours. The National Library was the first non-tertiary institution in the world to achieve this status.
The NDHA programme is a key initiative of New Zealand's Digital Strategy, launched by Hon David Cuncliffe, Minister of Information Technology in May 2005. Another initiative, the National Content Strategy is also under the stewardship of the National Library."The NDHA Programme will contribute to the Digital Strategy by preserving New Zealand's digital memory and is a significant building block in New Zealand's National Content Strategy as it is expected to contribute an estimated 26 terabytes of content by 2007," says Penny Carnaby, national librarian and chief executive of the National Library of New Zealand.