Simon Chamberlain’s library weblog

The National Library of NZ has launched Publications NZ, an online union catalogue of NZ material held in NZ libraries. It’s got a reasonably attractive interface and (yes!) allows users to create RSS feeds of searches. On the negative side, it’s limited to published material (so no theses), the list of the libraries that hold a given item is hard to navigate (why limit it to a small scrolling box?) and it only includes NZ material.

It’s great that users will find it easier to locate this material, but how often will they be searching solely for NZ material? We’ve already got the National Bibliographic Database, which allows subscribers to see any item held in any library in NZ; why not just expand that to the general public? I’m confused as to why we need a separate database, with less content than the NBD (albeit a much nicer interface).

Adults ‘encroach upon young people’s turf online‘, and aren’t necessarily welcome on sites like FaceBook and MySpace; and what happens when one’s different worlds collide in these networks (both Techdirt). The latter is something I’ve mentioned here before recently.

Social networking for law librarians (LLRX)

A virtual bookshelf for new books (The Shifted Librarian)

How to promote databases at your library (BlogJunction).

The Digital Futures summit is underway in Auckland, with some very impressive names presenting (including Tim Berners-Lee and Chris Andersen, though both only by video). Watch online here, read the programme here (PDF) and read Russell Brown’s commentary here (thanks to Jon P on the VUW internal staff blog).

Kawerau is the first community in New Zealand to benefit from the Aotearoa People’s Network, which provides free access to broadband internet services through public libraries to small rural areas (National Library).

Archives New Zealand have placed a selection of old New Zealand films online, for viewing (though not downloading, I think).  The films seem to be mostly (or solely?) documentaries. A nice feature is that the site is built on a wiki, and viewers can add their own descriptions of each film. A perfect example of combining authoritative cataloguing and the wisdom of crowds. (The first link goes to descriptions of the films, the second to the films themselves).

The government has launched a web standards wiki (National Library blog).

Has been published; see New Zealand Digital Content Strategy.

Last year at the National Digital Forum, Horowhenua Library Trust demonstrated a new product called Kete. It’s since gone live on their website.

Kete is “a community built digital library” that enables people to upload and share their stories, memories and images.  It’s designed for people with little or no computer experience, and it’s an open system, meaning that other users can edit the topics, add pictures, audio/visual material, tags, or links to other pages. Users can also comment on each story/topic. It looks (to me at least) rather like Wikipedia, but with multimedia content, and focused very much on the Horowhenua community and its stories.

Kete won a special mention at the World Summit Awards, and won the 3M Award for Innovation at LIANZA 2007.

Horowhenua Library Trust is also responsible for Koha, the open-source ILS.

The word ‘Kete’ is a Maori word meaning ‘basket’. It’s often used as a name, or part of a name, for a collection of resources, like a database.