Updates from DigitalNZ
GIF IT UP
Posted on 07 October 2014 by Thomasin
It’s a public domain celebration! The Digital Public Library of America and DigitalNZ are holding GIF IT UP, an international competition over the next six weeks (13 October–1 December, Eastern) to find the best GIFs reusing public domain and openly licensed digital video, images, text, and other material available via our search portals. Winners will have their work featured and celebrated online at the Public Domain Review and also on ... Read more
Emerging Pixels and DigitalNZ
Posted on 29 July 2014 by Thomasin
We’re excited to be collaborating with Digital Art Live on their Emerging Pixels programme this year. Emerging Pixels is a chance for students to develop and deliver an interactive work for the large screen in the Aotea Centre (see the image below). You can check out previous Emerging Pixels works here.
We’re encouraging creative technologies students to use openly licensed content from DigitalNZ in their work, and/or build... Read more
2000 sets
Posted on 15 July 2014 by Thomasin
Do you know who's making amazing sets on DigitalNZ? You guys are!
Image: Weraroa Cricket Club awards presentation, August 1971. Kete Horowhenua. CC-BY-NC-SA.
Oh yes, today we reached 2000 searchable sets on DigitalNZ, so we thought we'd list some of funniest, biggest, and most colourful sets that have been made over the two years that sets have been available on DigitalNZ — plus some other categories that we just made up for fun.
It's... Read more
Nips, tucks, and refreshes
Posted on 14 May 2014 by Admin
If you are a regular www.digitalnz.org visitor, you’ll have noticed a few changes we’ve been rolling out on the site over the last six months or so. We thought it’d be helpful to let you know what we’ve been up to, and also ask for any feedback or thoughts you have about these changes.
Mobile
Firstly, at the end of last year, we worked with our amazing developers Boost New Media and designers Clicksuite, and made www.digitalnz.org... Read more
NZ Music Month set competition
Posted on 02 May 2014 by Thomasin
It's NZ Music Month and we're celebrating with a special set-making competition!
All you have to do is collect together a DigitalNZ set which represents a kiwi song and you are in to win a sweet prize pack. If you need some inspiration, check out the awesome entries from last year's competition.
To make your set, just login and click the 'Add to sets' button as you search. If you are a first-time... Read more
Q&A with Donna Robertson
Posted on 27 February 2014 by Thomasin
Donna Robertson is a librarian and editor for the amazing Christchurch City Libraries, and a big DigitalNZ fan and set-maker extraordinaire! In fact, we recently ran a search on DigitalNZ for 'Donna Robertson' and it returned 100 sets. This officially makes Donna 'Queen of DigitalNZ sets'.
In the third of our sixth birthday blog series, we had a chat to Donna about what she loves about DigitalNZ, some tips for making... Read more
Q&A with UC CEISMIC
Posted on 19 February 2014 by Thomasin
This Q&A is the second in our collection of sixth birthday celebration interviews. We thought it was a good opportunity to check in with an organisation using the DigitalNZ's data, in particular our Application Programming Interface (API)*, so we had a chat with UC CEISMIC, a digital repository of information relating to the Christchurch earthquakes.
How did UC CEISMIC come to work with the DigitalNZ API?
DigitalNZ were involved... Read more
Q&A with V.C. Browne
Posted on 14 February 2014 by Thomasin
DigitalNZ is turning six years old this February! As part of our birthday celebrations, we decided it was high time we had a chat with some of our amazing content partners, fans, and people using the DigitalNZ API.
We were keen to get their thoughts on DigitalNZ, how they came to work with us, and what they think will be most exciting about DigitalNZ in the future—also, it's a good excuse for warm fuzzies all round.
Image: Timaru,... Read more
DigitalNZ celebrates 6 years
Posted on 03 February 2014 by Thomasin
Back in February 2008, the founding DigitalNZ project team was established, and they set about building up the services that we all know and love today. There was a moment early in our life when our identity was nearly all orange and pink — but this early disaster was luckily averted!
We've come a long way since then. We now work with nearly 150 amazing content partners, and bring together over 26 million pieces of digital... Read more
Colin McCahon | McCahon, Colin | McCahon, Colin John, 1919-1987
Posted on 17 December 2013 by Thomasin
On November 26 I presented a talk on linked data and entity reconciliation at the National Digital Forum held at Te Papa in Wellington. These are my speaker's notes.
Linked data is an amazing yet elusive idea. It extends the conventional Web by providing a means to identify and refer to specific entities or concepts and supplies a way to describe how those things are related. Together, the... Read more
Christmas top tens and favourites
Posted on 12 December 2013 by Thomasin
'Tis the season to summarise! There's nothing better than a good ol' Christmas top ten list, right?
Winning athletes on podium during awards ceremony for the six mile event, 1950 British Empire Games, Eden Park, Auckland. Ref: 114/125/34-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23253451
Let's get right into the top ten, most viewed, sets of 2013:
Mix & Mash 2013: the New Storytelling
Posted on 04 December 2013 by Admin
Mix & Mash 2013 draws to a close and we look back at a year of mashups, remixes and impressive re-use of open content.
http://www.mixandmash.org.nz/may-showcase/supreme-award-may-showcase-highly-commended
Mix & Mash changed tack this year. Instead of big data mashups, we were looking for storytelling skills, and for clever use of openly licensed images, videos, music, and other content to tell compelling... Read more
Facebook before Facebook: the Photo News
Posted on 25 September 2013 by Thomasin
Recently, we have been lucky to work with the HB Williams Memorial Library in Gisborne to make the Gisborne Photo News available on DigitalNZ. We are now pointing to 14,190 images of life in Gisborne, taken between 1954 and 1975.
The Photo News was a series of monthly publications produced by the Logan Publishing Group in Gisborne, which at its height was distributing to seven regions around New Zealand. Both Nelson... Read more
Creative people build creative sets
Posted on 18 September 2013 by Thomasin
I recently started working here at DigitalNZ, and quickly discovered my love of set-making. The process is often strange, intuitive and surprising.
Image: Carver, Robert William Ind 1838-1907 :Bell's kitchen garden 1892. Ref: A-164-020. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/22748258
DigitalNZ has over 25 million pieces of digital content, so you never quite know what... Read more
Visualising the DigitalNZ metadata ecosystem
Posted on 15 September 2013 by Thomasin
This blog post details an interactive visualisation of DigitalNZ data,which you can experiment with as a Google Fusion Table. Note that by defaultthe visualisation will only show about 150 nodes. Increase the number of nodes to the maximum value to see everything.Read on to learn more.
At the time of... Read more
Reflections on the 2013 Linked Open Data in Libraries Archives and Museums Summit
Posted on 24 July 2013 by Admin
Linked data is an amazing yet elusive idea — elusive for at least two reasons. It can be difficult for people who don't live and breathe linked data to grasp. It also remains difficult for institutions to know where to start in providing linked data views of their collections. At DigitalNZ we have been exploring these issues both internally and with some of our content... Read more
Metadata now available for commercial use
Posted on 10 June 2013 by Fiona
In our latest extension to the DigitalNZ API, we have updated the rights of thousands of metadata* records to allow for commercial use.A treasure trove of over 200,000 records can now be mixed, mashed and mined in anyway you like - be it for commercial, creative or educational purposes. DigitalNZ has millions of records available for reuse, but up until now this has been limited to non-commercial use only.Five... Read more
Puke Ariki – Heritage ‘Taranaki Style’
Posted on 10 June 2013 by Ting
Puke Ariki is an innovative museum, library and information centre that combines learning, knowledge, resources and heritage objects for a visitor experience that is like no other. Situated in New Plymouth between Mount Taranaki and the Tasman Sea, visitors can connect with the stories of the region’s past, present and future.
It’s also home to a large digital heritage collection, and remote visitors can enjoy the... Read more
Winning stories that remix & mashup
Posted on 04 June 2013 by Admin
DigitalNZ, Creative Commons Aotearoa NZ and the National Library of NZ have proudly announced the winners and selections for the May Showcase of Mix & Mash 2013.
10 amazing works from Kiwis of all ages were hand picked by judges JolisaGracewood, Mark Osborne and Dan Mills toreceiveprizes and go in for Supreme Awards. The collection of tales were singled out for conveying greatstory-lines about the past by remixing or... Read more
Your Musical Sets
Posted on 21 May 2013 by Thomasin
For the Music Month of May we called for Setsthat interpret Kiwi songs. And boy did you deliver!
After listening to your favouritetunes from Split Enzto Darcy Clay, music specialists here at the National Library have picked one DigitalNZ Set to win a $50 iTunes prize. And the winner is...
'A thing well made'
Thanks to musical setmaker Richard Robertson, who sent us this stylish representation of theMuttonbirds' haunting tune.
... Read more