Digital New Zealand A-tihi o Aotearoa

Digital New Zealand aims to make New Zealand content easy to find,
share and use. This includes content from over 20 organisations in the New Zealand cultural and heritage, broadcasting, education, and
government sectors; as well as local community sources and individuals.
Geospatial and commercial content is coming soon.

Our goal is to uncover hidden or buried New Zealand content such as
images, audio, video, interactives, and documents, and make them
available for discovery and use.

DigitalNZ will test new ways to create digital content, collect and
share existing digital content; and build smart, freely available,
search and discovery tools.

 DigitalNZ launched in late 2008 with:

• An API that allows developers to build new tools using data aggregated from over 25 New Zealand content providers (including galleries, museums, archives and libraries)
• A customisable search tool that lets anyone (especially non-developers) build a mini-search engine using specified content aggregated by DigitalNZ
• Advice and best practice guides for organisations who are creating digital content.

DigitalNZ also worked with members of the National Digital Forum (a coalition of New Zealand galleries, museums, archives and libraries, and other individuals and organisations concerned with making New Zealand's cultural heritage available online) to build two digital experiences to mark the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day: a Memory Maker (using Ideum's EditorOne video remix tool) stocked with film clips, sound, still images more that NDF members made available for remix by the public; and a customised search over World War One-related content that has a search widget for embedding on other websites.

 But don't just take our word for it. here's some other people's feedback on DigitalNZ:

"One of the best things I saw at the National Digital Forum
in Auckland last week was DigitalNZ. Being a Kiwi myself, I am
immensely proud that New Zealand has leapt forward and produced a
federated collection product that aggregates and then allows access
through a web interface and an open API. That it has brought together
very disparate partners is also very impressive."

Seb Chan, Powerhouse Museum, on the Fresh+New(er) blog

 "I'm delighted at the advent of this great initiative. In particular
it's pleasing to see the community and individual areas of the site
helping communities build their own digital content, and put the right
sort of access arrangements around it."

Peter Alexander, Executive Director, Digital Development Board 

"An example of the kind of tool that’s possible (one that the DigitalNZ team ‘prepared earlier’) is the customisable search builder,
which lets users design their own mini search engine to search for New
Zealand content on a subject of their interest - volcanoes, disasters,
ANZAC day, and so on. 

Wow! You can see the educational uses immediately. Pop a search on
your wiki or website relating to your class’s inquiry or project -
learners will be guaranteed quality New Zealand content on that topic. "

Sarah Jones, E-Learning team, Ministry of Education