The NZETC is now hosted by the National Library of New Zealand

The National Library and Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, are pleased to announce that from Tuesday 2 July 2024 the hosting of the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (NZETC) will be transferring to the Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, the National Library of New Zealand.

The National Library is making the NZETC available as a web archive. This preserves the content, appearance, and organisation of the original website, whilst also offering enhanced search capabilities.

The National Library will continue to make the NZETC freely available to all researchers and from Tuesday 2 July 2024  you can find it here: https://webarchive.natlib.govt.nz/

The New Zealand Electronic Text Collection and ResearchArchive are now in Wairētō

On Thursday 30 November 2017 the Library launched its new Digital Preservation System called Wairētō (meaning “deep waters”).

Wairētō includes the  New Zealand Electronic Text Collection (NZETC), our repository of heritage digital items, and the Institutional Repository (ResearchArchive) containing the research outputs of the University including Masters and PhD theses.

You are able to search Wairētō quickly and easily through the Library’s discovery service Te Waharoa.

We will continue to run the old sites concurrently for a period of time, so existing links will not be affected immediately.

If you have any questions or feedback please contact Michael Parry.

NZETC scheduled mainenance on Tuesday 21st June

The New Zealand Electronic Text Collection will be down for an extended period of time on the morning of Tuesday the 21st of June due to scheduled maintenance. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Carnival Student Graduation Programmes are now live

To mark the first graduation ceremony of 2016 the Carnival collection of Victoria student graduation programmes is now live on the NZETC.

The collection contains official ceremony programmes, revue performance scripts and other capping ephemera from 1903 to 1993. Interestingly the early performances included songs in Te Reo Māori.

Victoria's graduation ceremony was initially known as 'capping day' before becoming a week long celebration. Like today a formal capping parade and ceremony was held which was then followed by a student revue performance.

The first Carnival began with a performance at the Sydney Street schoolroom in 1903 and soon moved to the Town Hall. By the 1950s productions were held at the Wellington Opera House. A notable feature of the student revue performance were songs that teased the University and lecturers. In later years the targets of these songs included local and national personalities.


http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-corpus-carnival.html

Complete Prose of James K. Baxter digitised for free access

A lifetime of prose by celebrated New Zealand writer James K. Baxter covering over a million words and four hefty hardback books is being released free on the internet by Victoria University.

Baxter’s prose is now accessible through the NZETC (New Zealand Electronic Text Collection), Victoria University’s large and ever-growing digital resource comprising historical texts, manuscripts, and contemporary texts.

Complete Prose was published as a four-volume set last year by Victoria University Press. It is edited by Baxter scholar John Weir, who began working on the publication 40 years ago. Its publication was met with praise by scholars, critics and Baxter fans.

In his review in the NZ Listener, Baxter scholar Paul Millar said, “Reading Baxter’s Complete Prose en masse offers new and unexpected perspectives on his life and work.”

The four volumes draw on Baxter’s prose writing from his first draft of ‘Before Sunrise’ as a teenager in 1942 to his ‘Confession to the Lord Christ’ shortly before his death in 1972. Reviews, essays, lectures, journal articles, interviews and correspondence with friends and critics are some of what readers will be able to browse. The volumes are a chronicle of Baxter’s life and times, his preferences and prejudices, his crises and turbulent occasions.

Fergus Barrowman, publisher at Victoria University Press, says Complete Prose is a significant addition to Baxter scholarship.

“Complete Prose is a testament to Baxter’s huge contribution to New Zealand literature, culture and society. In its digital form, it will be readily accessible to many more readers, which will allow a continuing engagement with Baxter’s work.”

The collection is accessible here: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-corpus-baxter.html

Remember these? The Ready to Read Collection is now live

Get ready for a trip down memory lane as the Ready to Read books that many New Zealand children used to learn to read are now online.

The Ready to Read series was developed for students learning to read and was first published in 1963 by the School Publications Branch of the Department of Education.

The series was ground-breaking in that it was the first attempt to provide early reading materials that were also interesting stories reflecting New Zealand children’s real lives and that used natural language.

The 1963 collection consisted of twelve “little books”, graded by colour (three books at each of four levels: red, yellow, blue, and green) and six longer anthologies.

The little books and the first two of the anthologies are available on the NZETC website at http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-corpus-readytoread.html.

The Legal Māori Resource Hub is now live

To mark Māori Language week a new Māori resource called the Legal Māori Resource Hub has been launched.

The hub contains a dictionary of Māori legal terms and a searchable Māori language corpus compiled from our Legal Māori Archive. These resources were produced by the Victoria University of Wellington Law Faculty.


The dictionary can be searched for in Māori and English for Māori terms that describe Western legal concepts and law-related vocabulary. Each dictionary entry contains usage examples from contemporary and historical Māori language resources.


You can also browse the corpus Māori words and examples of how they have been used. Once you have found a word you can view frequency, form and collocation data by clicking the > next to your search word.


We think the hub will be a great resource for students of Māori Studies and Law, and also those wanting to improve their written Māori.


Access the hub at http://www.legalmaori.net.

WW1 and Victoria University

To mark Anzac Day and the centenary of the 1915 Gallipoli landings, the Library has created a digital collection of World War I material.

The material, which is publicly available, includes the Victoria University Archive’s Honour Roll, which lists the names of then current students and former students who were killed during World War I.

The collection also includes archival material related to Professor von Zedlitz, one of Victoria’s founding professors, who was forced from his post at Victoria due to the Alien Enemy Teachers Act 1915.

You can view this archival material online at http://library.victoria.ac.nz/files/exhibit/wwi/.

These works have a permanent home as part of the NZETC history of Victoria University collection available at http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-corpus-VUWHistory.html

The Spike marks the outbreak of World War One

Our hearts are with these men, wherever they go.

To mark the outbreak of World War One The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review, October 1914  recorded the names of the first group of Victoria University of Wellington students who volunteered to serve in World War One: Students with the Expeditionary Force

In the coming months Spike recorded the activities of students serving through letters to the editor, soldier diary entries, a growing list of students who enlisted and, sadly, an honour roll of those who were wounded or passed away. All of these articles are available from the Spike project homepage.

The NZETC is also happy to make available a collection of official and unofficial histories of New Zealand troops involved in World War One. This collection is available here: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-corpus-WH1.html

New Salient magazine issues from 1938, 1969 are now live

Salient magazine issues from 1938, 1969 are now live on the NZETC website. These issues can be accessed from the Salient project homepage.

Library Technology Services plan to make issues from 1939 to 1957 available over the coming months. Issues from the 1970's are also being prepared for digitisation at the moment.

Users will notice that some titles and table of contents contain an ellipsis. Library Technology Services have decided to make these issues live despite this issue which will be fixed as soon as possible.

Maintenance outage on Thursday 6th March from 8am-9am

On Thursday 6th March between 8am and 9am NZDT there will be a short period of scheduled maintenance on the server hosting the NZETC resources. While the maintenance is occurring these resources will not be available.

The anticipated period of interruption for VUW Students and Staff is 3-5 minutes, members of the public accessing the content may experience a longer period of interruption of up to 30 minutes.

Much of the NZETC content is also available to everyone via the internet archive at https://web.archive.org/web/2/http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Library Technology Services

New writing showcased in Turbine 13

Turbine 13 showcases writing from established and emerging voices, including the latest graduates of the International Institute of Modern Letter’s Master of Arts in Creative Writing.

 

This year's highlights include works from visiting American poet Mary Ruefle, Bill Manhire's tribute to Ralph Hotere and an extract from Helena Wiśniewska Brow's Adam Foundation Prize winning memoir. Turbine 13 also features an interview with 2013 Victoria University writer in residence Carl Shuker and audio from selected works.

Turbine 13 can be viewed at http://www.victoria.ac.nz/turbine

Maintenance outage on Thursday 20th February from 8am-9am

On Thursday 20th February between 8am and 9am NZDT there will be a short period of scheduled maintenance on the server hosting the NZETC resources. While the maintenance is occurring these resources will not be available.

The anticipated period of interruption for VUW Students and Staff is 3-5 minutes, members of the public accessing the content may experience a longer period of interruption of up to 30 minutes.

Much of the NZETC content is also available to everyone via the internet archive at https://web.archive.org/web/2/http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Library Technology Services

Recent technical issues are now resolved

We are happy to announce that the technical issues impacting the NZETC have now been resolved.

Thank you for bearing with us while we have worked through this period of instability.

If any readers find pages with errors please let us know and we will correct them as soon as possible.

The NZETC is suffering from technical difficulties

The NZETC is suffering from technical issues and many resources are not available at this time. We hope to have this resolved in January 2014.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

Exploring the Digital Landscape: Looking For Input

We are starting a process of looking at the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection.

Over the last couple of years we have tinkered around the edges giving it a new url, rebranding and shifting to a new server environment. We are now however due for an overhaul of the site from the bottom up.

We have a number of aims with this overhaul:

• Presenting our information in a better more user friendly manner.
• Making the site more responsive to corrections.
• Ensuring the future of the environment so that the underlying core infrastructure is robust and flexible.
• Enhancing the usability of the resources.
• Engaging with the users through the ability for community annotations and comments.
• Ensuring that the site delivers metadata in a way that engages with the semantic web. 
• Better integration with the library web presence.

So nothing too ambitious there. 

What I am looking for with this post is twofold.

Firstly I am looking for comments from users about what they currently use the NZETC for and also what they dislike about the NZETC. What would users like to see the NZETC do?

Secondly, as I am researching our options for the NZETC, I am interested in other sites that are doing similar things. If you know of any cool sites let me know. Also I would be interested in hearing about people’s experiences with different types of infrastructure.

Please post any comments to our blog or email Michael Parry, Digital Initiatives Co-ordinator.

He Papakupu Reo Ture: A Dictionary of Māori Legal Terms

He Papakupu Reo Ture: A Dictionary of Māori Legal Terms is now available. He Papakupu Reo Ture was produced by the Legal Māori Project research team based at Victoria University’s Law Faculty. The team’s aim was to “provide a resource to speakers of te reo Māori that will assist such speakers to use Māori vocabulary to describe Western legal concepts”.

In 2008 we digitised hundreds of historical legal documents that were written in the Māori language. This data was used to help build a corpus of Māori legal language which the research team analysed to write the dictionary. These formed the He Pātaka Kupu Ture or Legal Māori Archive. Researchers can access the original documents or download the corpus of texts published before 1910 here: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-corpus-legalMaori.html

For further information on the Legal Māori Project refer to project homepage on the Victoria University of Wellington Law Faculty Website.

Experiment Magazine now on the NZETC

Amongst the expanding collection of VUW student publications we have digitised, is a literary journal called Experiment. Published by the Victoria University College Literary Society, and running from 1956 to 1969, Experiment aimed to publish original poetry and prose contributed by Victoria's students and other local writers.

One regular contributor and editor was Renato Amato, who died suddenly in 1964. Experiment published a lot of Amato's work, including his short stories and extracts from his novels. His talent for story telling was recently acknowledged in The Listener.

Other contributors to Experiment have gone on to become established writers, including:

• Gordon Challis (Poet. See NZETC page, see Wikipedia page)

• Albert Wendt (Samoan-born novelist, poet, and academic. See NZETC page, see Book Council page)

• Norman Bilbrough (Poet, novelist, children's writer. See NZETC page, see Book Council page)

• Peter Bland (Poet and actor. See NZETC page, see Book Council page)

• Barry Mitcalfe (Writer and printer. See NZETC page, see Wikipedia Page)

Experiment will no doubt be of interest to readers and researchers of New Zealand Literature, and making it available in the NZETC allows researchers the opportunity to easily explore individual writers progress over time and across different publications.

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The Victoria University of Wellington Library has published its collection level statement for the NZETC. The statement provides guidance for collection development and management activities for the NZETC. By publishing the statement, the Library illustrates how the NZETC sits beside its other collections, in supporting learning, teaching, and research.

Turbine 12 is live

This year’s issue of literary journal Turbine is now online and can be viewed here.

Published by Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) and guest-edited by Master’s students Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle, M. Doyle Corcoran and Gregory Kan, Turbine 12 includes work by emerging and established writers from New Zealand and beyond.

A highlight of the journal is an excerpt and audio recording from Lamplighter, the enthralling novel by newly announced Adam Foundation Prize 2012 winner Kerry Donovan-Brown, but the literary riches don’t stop there.

A generous selection of new fiction and poetry offers grit, surprise and delight. Seed-clouds ripple inside the blood, music falls from back pockets, and a heart turns to mud. Stories about children provoke second thoughts on procreation, and times spent on the Jersey shore or the jellyfish-rich waters off Japan might provide readers with an early summer vacation. Back in the nonfictional world, Ashleigh Young attends a conference on boredom.

The issue also features an interview with prize-winning Young Adult writer Bernard Beckett, this year’s Victoria University Writer in Residence, where he provides an inside scoop on his upcoming work. Another highlight is the long, poignant sequence of poems from former poet laureate Michele Leggott, who tells us ‘there is language for everything but the cost is unspeakable’. And there’s a German translation of James Brown’s poem, ‘I come from Palmerston North’— an unexpected by-product of New Zealand’s closer literary relations with Germany in 2012, the result of our guest-of-honour status at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The ‘Reading Room’ offers insight into the rigours of the IIML’s Master of Arts in Creative Writing via excerpts from student reading journals—one writer likes to procrastinate by reading about Mt Everest; another notes the implausible good looks of a visiting poet. Twenty of this year’s IIML Master’s students have work on display, along with a scattering of graduates and a handful of rising stars from the United States and Australia.

Senior Lecturer Chris Price says, “Turbine has frequently introduced exciting new writers who have gone on to publish acclaimed books and I’m sure this year is no exception. We’ll be hearing a lot more from many of these writers in years to come.”

Pamphlets Galore!

We have recently started to add texts for one of our larger projects: the digitisation of The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout. We have already added a couple of hundred pamphlets and there are plenty more to come.

Sir Robert Stout

The pamphlets range between 1840 and 1920. The subjects they cover are surprisingly diverse. Here is just a small sample that recently caught our attention:

• Dunedin Industrial Exhibition 1881. Catalogue of exhibits

• The Proposed Imperial Museum for India and the Colonies

• The curse of gold, and the philosophy of currency

• Science and the Soul - Featuring this page with fantastic photographs of emotions and thoughts: