NDF and Coming Home

This section provides you with information about an opportunity for working together to showcase new and existing digital content and pilot a nationwide approach to collaborative digitisation.

NDF and Coming Home

The National Digital Forum Board invites you to participate in a content and discovery digital initiative with the theme of Coming Home, due to launch at the National Digital Forum on 27 November 2008.

This is an opportunity for the cultural and heritage community to demonstrate the richness of our collections alongside other New Zealand initiatives taking place to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I, on 11 November 2008.

The initiative is one of several being developed as part of the Digital New Zealand project and will demonstrate the value of investment in digitisation and digital discovery processes by delivering new content discovery and interaction experiences.

What is Digital New Zealand?

Digital New Zealand is one of two collaborative initiatives (the other being the Aotearoa People’s Network) being facilitated by the National Library of New Zealand as part of the New Zealand's Digital Content Strategy. The Digital New Zealand project has been established to offer all New Zealanders interactive access to a variety of rich taonga, resources and stories from a range of organisations, communities and individuals. It will make New Zealand content of all types more discoverable, accessible and useable.   Visit the Digital New Zealand information page to learn more.

What will What will be developed with the content?

NDF will be working with the Digital New Zealand Project Team to:

• develop a dedicated, cross-collection search across “Coming Home” digital content;
• create at least one new interactive digital showcase for New Zealanders to discover and interact with this themed content. The showcase is still to be determined but, as an example, it could be something that enables New Zealanders to re-mix digital objects and create wholly new pieces of content. For an example of what this could look like visit this Propaganda Film Maker developed for the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology.

What is the Coming Home theme?

The Coming Home theme focuses on the return of troops and the impact of war on this country.  The Digital NZ Project Team have developed of a description of the theme as a guide for you.  Note that this description is not intended to be prescriptive or restrictive.  Just use it as a guide.

What types of content are we looking for?

The range of digital content that could be used is broad – images, audio, video and text are all possibilities. The amount contributed by an institution need not be large either: it could be a web page on local events of the time, some photographs or an oral history recording.

Examples of content could be:

• Soldiers' Diaries
• Diaries of those on the homefront
• Oral Histories of veterans or those on the homefront
• Photographs from Armistice Day celebrations
• Recordings of songs
• Diary entries referring to the Influenza Epidemic
• Recipes from the time
• Ephemera such as advertisements, postcards, and posters relating to peacetime, the return home
• Art works
• Films of armistice celebrations

Or you might be able to suggest other relevant materials.

What do I need to do?

Please use this online questionnaire to provide us with information about your relevant content. The questionnaire is divided into 3 sections that asks:

• For information about digital content is already in your collections that could be contributed to the Coming Home initiative
• Whether you can prioritise the digitisation of any material for contribution to the Coming Home Initiative
• For information about any exceptionally relevant content that is not in a digital form, and that you don’t have the resources to digitise. The Digital New Zealand project is exploring opportunities for enabling digitisation of exemplary content beyond the launch of the Coming Home initiative.

Please complete this online questionnaire form 25 July 2008.  (Alternatively use this (Word Document, fill it in, save it, and email it to cominghome@natlib.govt.nz by 25 July 2008)

The 25 July 2008 deadline is required so that the Digital New Zealand Team can plan how they can work with your content and plan the technical development in time for our November launch.

If you have any questions please email them to:cominghome@natlib.govt.nz and one of the team will respond to you.

We hope you are as excited about this great opportunity for collaboration as we are.

The NDF Board