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:

Vacancy at Victoria University of Wellington Library

Victoria University of Wellington Library is seeking a new Associate Director - Library Technology Services. The successful applicant will be responsible for managing, developing and administering all library-based technology services and activities. The Associate Director would also be a member of the Library Leadership Team and actively contribute to the strategic direction of the Library. For more information please see the full job advertisement here: http://vacancies.vuw.ac.nz/positiondetail.asp?p=6341.

The closing date for applications is the 5^th of November 2012.