Showing posts with label digital libraries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital libraries. Show all posts

Friday, 13 July 2012

Digital New Zealand

Digital NZ - A-Tihi te Aotearoa Digital NZ is an initiative with more than 120 partners, led by the National Library of New Zealand .

Digital NZ provides access to and aims to make New Zealand digital content more useful. This includes helping people use digital material from libraries, museums, government departments, publicly funded organisations, the private sector, and community groups.


Users can find NZ digital material that is hidden or buried on the internet and search across more than 20 million digital items to discover New Zealand treasures such as amazing aerial photos, old posters and memorabilia, newspaper clippings, artworks, and publications. Items are contributed from partners including Te Papa, the Alexander Turnbull Library, Auckland Art Gallery, Te Ara, NZ On Screen and many many more.

You can also create your own collections or sets of material (and browse those of others), or for those more technically minded, get access to NZ search data for your own projects. All the data used in this search service is available for free public use and a developers section provides access to an API key and further details.

Current sets on the site are diverse and include seed catalogues, Marmite, sickness and medicine, and my own created Commonwealth set http://digitalnz.org/user_sets/094341b5326ecc2b as an example showing different media (cartoons, photographs, text, audio, television and documentary) and a range of Commonwealth related material and topics.

 


Wednesday, 7 December 2011

Illustrated London News Collection. New Zealand collection 1842-1902

Illustrated London News Collection. New Zealand collection 1842-1902


The Illustrated News Collection  ia an interesting digitisation project from the University of Waikato Library who have scanned all images and text relating to New Zealand from the Illustrated London News during this period.

The Illustrated London News was a picture newspaper that ran for over 150 years, its first issue appearing on 14 May 1842. The paper was published weekly until 1971 when it became a monthly. It provided a general source of news but its main appeal lay in its use of woodcuts and engravings to enhance the text. Later, photographs were introduced to provide the illustrations. The paper was highly popular and successful and, while it had an emphasis on Britain, world events were covered, especially where Britain was involved or affected. To this end, Britain's imperial interests and the emerging colony of New Zealand received some coverage especially during the period of the New Zealand Wars.

This database produced by the University of Waikato Library includes scanned images of the all the text and illustrations that refer to events in New Zealand during the first sixty years from volume 1 in 1842 to volume 121 in 1902. The entries can be searched by keyword or you can browse in chronological order.

Key topics covered include social, economic and political history. The Senate House Library also has access to the printed copies of the Illustrated London News.

Friday, 30 September 2011

BLDS Digital Library

Very pleased to be helping to promote a digital initiative form colleagues at the British Library for Development Studies (BLDS:

New BLDS Digital Library is helping research from developing countries enjoy a wider global readership


"With so many library users now expecting to access information through search engines, developing country publications tend to get overlooked in favour of the wealth of research available online from American and European academic institutions.

The British Library for Development Studies (BLDS) has the largest collection of economic and social development materials in Europe and over half of it originates from developing countries. But until now, much of the BLDS physical collection has only been available to visitors to the library or users of its Document Delivery service. BLDS is hoping that its newly-launched Digital Library will help redress the situation by making developing country research more accessible and visible online

The new service, funded by the UK’s Department for International Development, has been created to help decades of research from developing country institutions enjoy a wider global readership. BLDS is working with partner research institutes in Africa and Asia, to digitise their printed publications and host them online so they can be easily found through search engines. Nearly 600 papers have been digitised so far from Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and India, with more to be added in coming months as BLDS continues building partnerships with research institutes. The publications in the BLDS Digital Library are being made available through a Creative Commons licence which enables future sharing and dissemination of this content by others.

For more information on the BLDS Digital Library, contact Henry Rowsell

or visit the BLDS Global Projects webpage at http://blds.ids.ac.uk/global-projects