Poster presented at:DC-2009 : Dublin Core Conference, Seoul, South Korea, 2009. http://dcpapers.dublincore.org/pubs/article/view/982

1. Digital New Zealand: advice, standards and interoperability
1. Introducing DigitalNZ ā-tihi o Aotearoa
Karen Rollitt
National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matāuranga o Aotearoa
Introduction
Digital content that complies with open standards and
formats improves its interoperability and usability. In
the mid-2000s New Zealand’s growing digital content
space was being populated with a growing number of
proprietary and bespoke digital standards and formats
characteristic of the ‘digital dark age’ risk.
New Zealand Digital Content Strategy (2007)
In 2007 the New Zealand Digital Content Strategy
(2007), identified the need to promote open standards
formats and interoperability as a means of
maintaining knowledge and heritage over time. A
five element digital content framework was identified
to aid understanding and analysis of digital content
issues.
Digital Content Strategy Five element digital content framework
Digital Content Strategy five element digital content framework
Creating and protecting content:
Born-digital content needs new skills for its creation and use. It provides
unique opportunities for innovation and creativity, and requires the means to
protect it from theft and misuse.
Accessing and discovering content:
Digital Content with mechanisms to enhance access and discovery is vital.
Sharing and using content:
The ability for users to be able to find relevant content that they can readily
use, re-use, share, repurpose and add their own dimension to, is a key feature
of the digital age.
Managing and preserving content:
Digital content is capable of being stored in large volumes and groupings and
as different formats and devices become obsolete, it risks being lost. Managing
and preserving content for continued use is essential.
Understanding and awareness of content:
Digital content is altering our commonly held notions of information,
knowledge, and material value. As we transition through the digital age, we
need to understand and be aware of the digital content environment,
opportunities and challenges, in order to make more informed decisions,
choices and investments.
Element Digital Content Framework
Digital New Zealand homepage
DigitalNZ ā-tihi o Aotearoa: a nationwide initiative
DigitalNZ ā-tihi o Aotearoa is a nationwide initiative and implemented as
an outcome of the government’s New Zealand Digital Content Strategy
(2007).
Intended as a long-term programme of work DigitalNZ aims to find ways
to make New Zealand’s rapidly growing digital content more visible,
discoverable and accessible in an ever-changing digital environment.
DigitalNZ aims to connect New Zealand’s digital content from collections
of significance and find ways for New Zealanders to engage in, use and
reuse digital content.
DigitalNZ Wave 1 (2008)
The first DigitalNZ initiative was launched in 2008 as DigitalNZ Wave 1
and was tasked with building the foundation and infrastructure for
DigitalNZ ā-tihi o Aotearoa.
Wave 1 began exploring and testing ways in which New Zealand’s digital
content could be harvested from content providers and exposed for use
and reuse. The mantra of DigitalNZ Wave 1 was Find, Share, Use,
New Zealand digital content.

2. DigitalNZ develops good practice guidance
In 2008 DigitalNZ was established and tasked with, amongst other things, providing
good practice advice and guidance on digital standards and digital content creation.
Researching digital content standards
To develop DigitalNZ’s framework for good practice guidance an analysis was made of
information standards for digital content. Many types of standards were explored including
international and national standards; best practice, protocols and profiles.
Different types of standards for different purpose were also explored to cover the full
range of requirements for creating, describing and managing digital content, for
example, file format types, resource description and transport protocols. To be
included in the analysis standards needed to meet some or all of the following criteria:
• published by a trusted and not for profit organisations
• been through some due process to reach consensus
• have uptake by trusted organisations.
• be in mainstream use
• easily available
The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1
meet all the criteria.
2. About developing good practice guides
Developing DigitalNZ good practice guidance
The complex world of standards needed to be developed into good
practical guidance. To do this DigitalNZ analysed frameworks such as the
NISO’s Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections
(2007), models such the OAIS functional model (2002), and researched
online services already providing good digital advice for example, JISC
Digital Media (2009).
Drawing on the Digital Content Strategy five element digital content
framework and Hodge’s (Hodge 2000) information life cycle DigitalNZ
developed the digital content lifecycle framework to drive the development
.
of digital good practice and open standards promotion
in
……… New Zealand.
.
DigitalNZ Digital
Presenting digital content standards
The information life cycle diagram contains seven high
level functions for selecting, creating, describing,
managing, discovery, use and reuse, and preservation of
digital content. Although there is some overlap of activities
across the seven functions is an easy concept to follow for
those starting out on the digital content journey.
The DigitalNZ initiative aims to make New Zealand
digital content easy to find, share and use and therefore
its focus is on five core elements of the digital content life
cycle to create, describe, manage. discover and use and
reuse digital content.
Content Life Cycle

3. 3. Digital Content life cycle and Make it Digital
Make it Digital homepage
Welcome to Make it Digital
The digital content life cycle is now used on DigitalNZ’s Make it Digital
website as a tool to present guidance for good practice with digital content.
Guides for selecting, creating, description, and use and reuse of digital
content are now available on the website (2009).
The guides have open standards and interoperability at their core and
information about Dublin Core metadata is referenced in the guide
“Describing digital content”. This has already been a focus of discussion in
the Questions Section in discussing interoperability and long-term usability of
metadata embedded in digital photos.
More about structured open metadata standards like Dublin Core will be
incorporated into the other elements of the digital content life cycle for
example, the management element for the topics harvesting, syntax, and
repositories, and the discovery element for searching.
The guides are primarily aimed at audience of small and medium
organisations.
References
1. A framework for good digitisation (2009). Version 2.0.
http://makeit.digitalnz.org/guidelines/selectingfordigitisation/selection-resources/
2. DigitalNZ ā-tihi o Aotearoa (2009) DigitalNZ. 22 July 2009. http://www.digitalnz.org/
3. Digital Strategy. (2007) New Zealand digital content Strategy.
http://www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz/Resources/NewZealand-Digital-Content-Strategy/
4. NISO (2007). A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections. (3rd ed.)
http://www.niso.org/publications/rp/framework3.pdf
5. Hodge. Gail (2000). Best Practices for Digital Archiving: An information life cycle
approach. D-Lib Magazine, 6 (1)
Retrieved May 2009 from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january00/01hodge.html
6. Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems. (2002) Reference model for an open
archival information system
7. (OAIS) : recommendation for space data system standards. Washington CCSDS Secretariat,
Program Integration
Division (Code M-3), National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
8. JISC Digital Media (2009). JISC Advisory Service. 22 July 2009.
http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/
9. Digital Dark l age http://liswiki.org/wiki/Digital_Dark_Age
Acknowledgements
Lewis Brown and Andy Neale of DigitalNZ
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Poster presentation: at DC2009, Semantic Interoperability of Linked Data, Seoul, Korea, October 12-16, 2009