National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 62 | April 2003


Visit by National Library of New Zealand Digital Archiving Staff

Dave Thompson and Kirsty Smith of the National Library of New Zealand
Dave Thompson and Kirsty Smith of the National Library of New Zealand

A week-long visit to the National Library of Australia by Dave Thompson and Kirsty Smith of the National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ) from 10–14 February 2003 highlighted the NLNZ’s interest in advancing its web archiving activities and recognised the Library’s achievements in developing effective systems and workflows for building Australia’s Internet archive—the PANDORA archive.

Dave Thomspon, Resource Development Analyst with NLNZ’s Digital Initiatives Unit, is responsible for integrating digital acquisitions into the NLNZ’s daily business and has been involved in web harvesting, establishing workflows for processing and handling digital material and developing the NLNZ Preservation Metadata Schema. Kirsty Smith is the Digital Archivist with the Alexander Turnbull Library and has also been involved in the NLNZ’s web harvesting activities and developing processes for acquiring and managing digitally born unpublished material.

During their visit to the National Library Dave and Kirsty spent a large part of their time with Paul Koerbin, Supervisor of the Electronic Unit, who provided an in-depth look at workflows and the PANDORA Digital Archiving System (PANDAS) used to manage the archiving of online publications in PANDORA. They also spent time with staff of the Business Systems Support branch learning about the technical infrastructure of PANDAS. Kirsty and Dave met with staff from the Digital Services Branch, the Digitisation Unit and Preservation Services Branch to discuss broader digital archiving issues. During the visit Dave Thompson provided a demonstration to interested Library staff of Discover: Te Kohinga Taonga, the NLNZ online resource for schools providing access to digitised material from the Alexander Turnbull Library collections.

The keen interest shown by the New Zealand visitors in the Library’s digital archiving activities made for useful and productive discussions for staff of both national libraries.
—Paul Koerbin, Supervisor, Electronic Unit

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