Where to for the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre?

What is the value of the work we have complete so far? What are our goals for the next five years? How can we best contribute to the University's strategic goals? What is our role in the wider community of digital content providers? These are the questions that we're asking as part of a review of the NZETC's strategic direction and I'm interested in views from colleagues around the country. I encourage you to send me your thoughts or comment here.

(apologies for the long post)

Digitisation? Publication of born-digital academic journals and research? Digital humanities or eResearch projects? What’s the right balance? What would help us meet the goals set out in the University's strategic plan? And what is feasible given practical concerns like budget?

Specifically the review asks

• What is the current operational model for the NZETC?
• How does the work of NZETC relate currently to other areas of the Library and University?
• What factors will influence the future of NZETC business (e.g. technology)?
• What is the future strategic direction (and related business model) of the NZETC especially in relation to the Library and University?
• What resources are required to support this strategy?
• Is the funding model affordable and sustainable?

All the information gathered as part of the review will be assessed by the University Librarian, a second member of the Library Executive and a senior academic,and used to make a recommendation on the future direction of the Centre to the DVC Academic. If the recommendation requires a substantial changes to the operation of the Centre then we will move to a full Change Proposal with further opportunities for consultation.


As a starting point for the review we are looking at how other eText Centres and collections have evolved over the years. See below for information on the University of Virginia eText Centre, the University of Sydney Electronic Text and Image Collection (SETIS), the University of New Brunswick Electronic Text Centre and the University of Auckland Early New Zealand Book project.

Virginia
The Virginia Etext Centre was established in 1992. It’s a useful comparison because the NZETC was established by a Fulbright Scholar from the University of Virginia who came to New Zealand to set up a Centre based on the Virginia EText Centre model. Like the NZETC, the Virginia Etext Centre undertook a large amount of digitisation work and created a open online collection of texts to support the teaching and research of the University. Like the NZETC, the Virginia Etext Centre was part of the University Library. Like the NZETC, the Virginia Etext Centre worked with academics, mainly in the humanities, to publish new work and provide support for research using information technology to explore texts in new ways.

In 2007 the University of Virginia Library extended its commitment to digital research and scholarship by establishing department of the same name. The various activates of the Etext Centre were separated into distinct units and in some cases combined with other existing Library units. The University of Virginia Library Digital Research and Scholarship department contains:

Scholars Lab: Unifies methods of text creation and analysis established by the EText Center with other important modes of critical inquiry such as GIS, statistical analysis, and custom programming. Provides expertise and assistance to staff and advanced students in digital research, electronic text encoding and qualitative analysis, digitization of texts and images. http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/scholarslab/

Digital Collections: The texts from the Etext Centre along with a large image collection - http://lib.virginia.edu/digital/collections/text/

Digital Curation Services: Provides services in digitization, digital publishing, creation of digital collections, and repository implementation and support. http://www2.lib.virginia.edu

Digital Media Lab: Provides consultation on digital imaging, audiovisual production and post-production, physical interactivity, and 2D/3D animation. http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/dml/

In addition to all this within the Library, the University of Virginia also supports a research unit to explore and develop information technology as a tool for scholarly humanities research. The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities is described as unique collaboration between humanities and computer science research faculty, computer professionals, student assistants and project managers, and library faculty and staff. http://www.iath.virginia.edu/

Sydney

SETIS (Sydney Electronic Text and Image Service) was established by the University of Sydney Library in 2002. Today is is part of the much larger Library eScholarship initiative that integrates the management of digital content with new forms of access and scholarly publication. Launched in 2006 it has two overlappying streams of work - digital library (including SETIS, the IR, research and teaching around digital content) and publishing (Sydney University Press). The unit employs a Digital Project Analyst who does things like journal digitisation, implementation of XTF for image collections, and a survey of research data management needs, XSLT rendering of botanic taxonomic keys, and relational-to-XML data translation. http://escholarship.usyd.edu.au/ The Library is also a partner in the University Digital Innovation Unit which promotes escholarship in the humanities, arts and social sciences by providing a platform for information sharing, research support and technical innovation, and enabling new approaches to the use of digital methods in research. The DIU’s partners are the Archaeological Computing Laboratory, PARADISEC and the Library’s Sydney eScholarship. The Unit is funded by the Faculty of Arts and the University Library http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/digitalinnovation/

New Brunswick
Since its formation in 1996, the Electronic Text Centre at UNB Libraries has taken a leadership role in electronic scholarly communication, humanities computing, and digital libraries. The Centre advances and supports research and education, promotes the role of standards, and collaborates with faculty in these areas. The Centre is a vital part of the University of New Brunswick Libraries’ commitment to enriching scholarly communication through advanced technologies and to preserving our digital heritage.” http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/

Auckland

The Early New Zealand Books project is one of a number of digital collection for which the University of Auckland Library Digital Services group is responsible for developing and managing. The collections represent a range of resources, including poetry, architectural drawings, digitised books, theses, and photographic images. The collections provide teaching and research resources for both staff and students, and communities outside the University. The Digital Services Group also has the primary responsibility the ongoing development and maintenance of the Library’s electronic resources network. This consists of networked databases, Internet-based and locally created created content, the Web OPAC - Voyager, selected Internet resources, and electronic services, such as ‘Ask a Librarian’. Auckland also has the Center for eResearch which has responsibility for research data management.

Legal Māori Archive launched

The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre is proud to announce the launch of the Legal Māori Archive, a collection of more than 14,000 pages of around 250 19th century documents that illustrate the bi-lingual nature of New Zealand's legal history.

The Legal Māori Archive is freely available to the public and can be accessed via the NZETC website.

Among the many documents featured in this collection are the following:

• The Proceedings of the Kotahitanga Parliaments
• Henry Hanson Turton's Māori Deeds of Land Purchases in the North Island of New Zealand
• Maori translations of Acts and Bills circulated among Māori communities by the Crown
  

The Archive has been created in conjunction with Mamari Stephens from the Victoria University of Wellington's School of Law as part of a project to establish a corpus of legal Māori documents, which will allow the analysis of the language and eventually a dictionary of legal Māori terms and concepts.

It is the first time the documents have been brought together in one place and is the largest collection of separate documents that the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre has digitised.

The Legal Māori Project seeks to resource speakers of te reo Māori who may not currently have access to a shared vocabulary to describe Western legal concepts. This Project will collate, develop and make available the terminology from Legal Māori texts, including those from the Legal Māori Archive, to all speakers and learners of te reo Māori and all researchers

The Legal Māori Archive has been made possible by funding from the Victoria University of Wellington Library Contestable Fund and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, and is informed by a Reference Group which includes prominent academics, experts in te reo Māori, linguists and judges.

The Dean of Victoria's Law School, Professor Tony Smith, says of the project: "This work is of importance to New Zealand, to Māori and the University. Its potential impact is great – it will, in short, allow a Māori voice in a legal context in a way never before possible."

"This first milestone along the way is something to celebrate."

New texts from the NZETC

The NZETC is pleased to announce the addition of a number of new texts to the online collection. These include:

• L. G. D. Acland's account of The Early Canterbury Runs
• James Edward Alexander's account of the New Zealand wars, Bush Fighting and Incidents of The Maori War
  
• Leonard Cockayne's The Cultivation of New Zealand Plants and The Vegetation of New Zealand
  
• George French Angas' Polynesia (1866)
  
• a number of texts added to the Nineteenth Century New Zealand Novels collection, including three titles by William Satchell:
• Emily Bathurst; or, at Home and Abroad, by The Wife of a Clergyman (1847)
• Number One; or, The Way of the World, by Daniel Puseley (1862)
• A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters, by Mary Ann Barker (1887)
• A South-Sea Siren, by George Chamier (1895, 1970)
• Raromi, or, The Maori Chief's Heir, by A. A. Fraser (1888)
• A Maori Maid, by Henry Benjamin Vogel (1898)
• The Land of The Lost, by William Satchell (1902, 1938)
• The Toll of The Bush, by William Satchell (1905)
• The Greenstone Door, by William Satchell (1914, 1935)
  
• Paul and Sally Grey's account of Paul's Grandfather's war experiences, Private J. D. Caves: The Long Journey Home (2004)

Where possible digital editions have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.

eBook links broken

[eBook links now fixed]

Due to a technical issue, the links on our website labeled "Microsoft Reader eBook" are broken (and have been for some time). We are working on this and expect a fix to go live in approximately two weeks.

Many thanks to the several users who spotted this.

Giving us feedback is the best way to get problems fixed; if you notice anything wrong with our website or just have questions, please email us on director@nzetc.org

New Zealand’s WWII Pacific stories available online

The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre is pleased to be able to make available online the histories of the New Zealand Third Division, covering the activities of New Zealanders in the Pacific during the Second World War.

The digitisation of these texts provides the most complete picture of the activities of New Zealanders in the Pacific during WWII. Being printed more than 50 years ago in relatively small quantities, these texts are now difficult to access and a complete set may go for more than $500 at auction.

Although many people know about the activities of New Zealand troops in the northern hemisphere during WWII, it is often forgotten that New Zealand's undertakings in the Pacific were comparable in terms of scale and importance. More than 38,000 New Zealand troops embarked to serve in the Pacific during the war (compared with around 59,000 for the northern hemisphere), and a number of these were wounded or killed in battle.

Many New Zealand families have fathers and grand-fathers who served in the Pacific, and now that these texts are digitised they will now be able to learn more about the role these men played in defending their country. As other commentators have noted, there seems to be an increasing awareness and interest among the public of the activities of New Zealanders in the war, particularly as many of these former soldiers are now passing away.
Attendances at ANZAC day services have been steadily increasing, and it seems that New Zealand's participation in the war is strongly bound up in our sense of national identity.

As a nation our thinking about New Zealand's role in the Second world War has been influenced by the fifty-volume Official History of which the Pacific activities are covered in a single volume. However, important though this work is, it underplays the scale and significance of New Zealand's contribution in the Pacific during the war.

At the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre we often receive feedback and queries about the texts that we have previously digitised concerning New Zealand's activities in the Second World War, and the 73,000+ page views of this content within the last month lead us to believe that the Third Divsion histories will be as well-received by the New Zealand public.

Cyclopedias of New Zealand online

We are happy to announce that all six volumes of the Cyclopedia of New Zealand are now available online.

These six volumes were published between 1897 and 1908, and present a glimpse of life in New Zealand at the turn of the twentieth century. There are around 20,000 people profiled in these texts, many of whom have biographical notes and photographs providing a snapshot of their activities and achievements.

The six volumes are:

• Volume 1. Wellington Provincial District. Published 1897
• Volume 2. Auckland Provincial District. Published 1902
• Volume 3. Canterbury Provincial District. Published 1903
• Volume 4. Otago and Southland Provincial Districts. Published 1905
• Volume 5. Nelson, Marlborough and Westland Provincial Districts. Published 1906
• Volume 6. Taranaki, Hawke's Bay and Wellington Provincial Districts. Published 1908

The aim of The Cyclopedia, stated the publishers in the Preface to Volume One, was to “place on record plain facts regarding the settlement and progress of the Colony”. Notwithstanding this ideal, it is important to note that members of the public paid to feature in The Cyclopedia and supplied the compilers with their histories and personal details. The information they provided was as accurate as memory—and honesty—permitted. Not surprisingly, the portraits are invariably flattering: in the publishers' words, “the compilers have recognised the advisability of representing the various subjects of notice as they individually appeared to themselves and their friends, in their best and happiest moments, rather than as they might have appeared to their enemies, at their worst.” Similarly, many of the business entries are unashamedly promotional—business owners were, effectively, buying advertising for their products and services. Individuals who would not or could not pay the fee required to feature in The Cyclopedia are not included—there are few entries for women, Māori or non-European settlers for example.

We hope that having these texts online in a structured digitial form will present a great resource for researchers and genealogists.

Transition to TEI P5

At the NZETC, the base format for all our texts is a format called Text Encoding Initiative (or TEI) and it's an XML format that we used to store all our texts in. We've just gone live with an updated version of the format, called 'P5.' As an end user, you're unlikely to notice the difference between the previous version an P5, but it enables us to do interesting things which you hopefully will notice. These include:

1. Representation of documents which have large additions (such as books with newspaper clippings pasted into the covers)
   
2. Representation of non-Unicode glyphs
3. The ability to piecewise add extra functionality to encode new features as we take on new projects

At the back end, P5 also allows:

1. Significantly better validation of dates, times, enumerations, etc, reducing errors and speeding the encoding of new texts
   
2. Easier interlinking with other xml schemas
3. Standardised use of the xml:lang tag to identify languages
4. A significant upgrade in the accompanying toolset

If you notice anything that's not working or that looks odd, please email us at director@nzetc.org