Faqs

What content will you include in DigitalNZ?

We are interested in content that has a connection and relevance to Aotearoa New Zealand. Our content scope details the supporting principles we use to prioritise content.

What do you need from us?

Firstly, we email you a short participation letter with our responsibilities and details about joining DigitalNZ. You need to read this and agree to our metadata contribution terms.

You don't need to sign and send anything, all we need is for you to state your agreement to these terms in a reply email.

After you've agreed to our terms, we need access to your metadata and someone with a bit of time to talk to about your collection, discuss any issues that arise with the harvesting process, and to check our work.

Which fields from our metadata will be mapped to DigitalNZ?

Our harvesting systems and processes are flexible and we are responsive to different kinds of data and websites. 

Our metadata dictionary provides info on the most relevant fields in the DigitalNZ harvesting system.

What are the contractual obligations to joining up with DigitalNZ?

To join DigitalNZ you need to agree to our metadata contribution terms, which outline your responsibilities and what the National Library can and can't do with your collection's metadata. 

You also need to decide if you'd like to make your metadata available for commercial or non-commercial use.

If we need to remove access to content, can we do that at our discretion, and quickly?

Sure thing! While you cannot directly access the database to remove your content, we can do this for you quickly, either at an item level or your entire collection. Your agreement with DigitalNZ is reversible, and we can remove all your metadata at your request.

To request any removals email us at info@digitalnz.org. We will action your request within one business day of receiving the request.

We can also block access to developers who breach our API terms, denying them access to your content results through the data sharing API. If you find any examples of use that you are not happy with please contact us immediately so we can assist.

Can we share only part of our collection with DigitalNZ?

Absolutely. We can work with you to reject sections or specific items in your collection, based on their metadata.

We only harvest the metadata of your collection, not the digitised objects, and use this to direct people to your website. To help people find what they're looking for, we define small thumbnail images as metadata and harvest these.

Therefore, you need to have the right to sub-license your metadata to the National Library of New Zealand so that we can make it discoverable via digitalnz.org and to other people via our API.

We kōrero with our content partners, and some of them make large thumbnail images available on DigitalNZ to improve people's search experience. These images are also accessible through our API, but developers are not permitted to use them. This is a specific clause of our developer API terms.

If there are parts of your metadata that you don't want to share with DigitalNZ for copyright reasons, we're happy to tailor our harvest to suit your needs.

What is the time frame for getting new material into DigitalNZ?

We aim to complete the process (end-to-end) within 2-3 weeks of you getting in touch. It depends a bit on how many other partners we are working with at the time, and how our systems work together.

Can we share material via the DigitalNZ website, but opt out of the data sharing API?

No. Being part of DigitalNZ means you need to share your metadata via both our website and API service. 

There are many benefits to sharing your data via our API. If you have concerns, we'd love to talk with you about it.

And last but not least, from memory you mentioned this was a free service, free right?

Yes, free! You just need to cover your time and effort. We don't charge for our own time.