Make It Digital - DigitalNZ - Make it Digital Blog

We're closing this blog and moving the posts

2011-09-29T10:06:33Z

We are in the process of updating the Make it Digital website.

As part of our planned refresh we have moved all our Make it Digital blog posts over to the brand spanking new DigitalNZ blog and created a new digitisation category. Head over there to check out all our posts on making New Zealand digital content easier to find, share, and use. Don't forget to check out our shiny new DigitalNZ Search as well!

The final stretch: Digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

2011-08-10T14:02:42Z

Make it Digital Award winners - University of Waikato Library have been blogging their experience of digitising the The British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand. This post describes their final sprint towards the finish line! You can read about the project progress and process in previous posts one, two and three.

It has been some time since our last update but we can report that we have been making progress.

Various key tasks have been worked on or completed including:

The webpages have been built and developed
Correcting of metadata for completed pages
Checking that all files have been added
Rights management -thanks Fiona and Lewis (from DigitalNZ) for our discussion on videoconference
We did have a few technical glitches but these have all been solved now.

We have recently sent out a test version to friends and colleagues and this resulted in some useful responses and has given us tweeks to work on and investigate.

And we can report another successful 'product' -a baby has arrived. Samia was born on 28 May 2011 to Abdi and his wife.

We hope to go live with a pilot soon.

The final stretch: Digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

2011-08-10T14:02:42Z

It has been some time since our last update but we can report that we have been making progress.

Various key tasks have been worked on or completed including:

The webpages have been built and developed
Correcting of metadata for completed pages
Checking that all files have been added
Rights management -thanks Fiona and Lewis (from DigitalNZ) for our discussion on videoconference
We did have a few technical glitches but these have all been solved now.

Nelson Photo News Launched

2011-08-10T13:43:16Z

Make it Digital Award winners - The Friends of the Nelson Library Microfilm Sub-committee have been blogging their experience of working collaboratively to digitise the Nelson Photo News. This, their last post, tells us the happy news about their launch. You can read previous posts about the digitisation project process and progress here and here.

After a long gestation Nelson Photo News on-line was finally launched to an enthusiastic crowd on 18th July 2011.

The team responsible was surprised and delighted that Barry Simpson, the Nelson Photo News chief editor and photographer, was able to attend despite being in poor health in recent years. As Joanna Innes-Walker chairperson of the team remarked “my day was made when I saw Barry Simpson himself coming through the door”.

Barry Simpson (centre-left), the Nelson Photo News chief editor and photographer, with his daughter Annette Savage (centre-right) enjoying themselves with guests at the launch event.

To get the website up and running the project team had to resolve various issues including how to deal with copyright issues around images of the 1960’s era. The team are pleased they have shown a way for other cities around New Zealand to digitally publish their own Photo News. Usage figures from the website show that around 1000 people viewed the site in the week after the launch.

Feedback has been very positive and among other requests received has been one for more information on a long lost relative and one from the UK for permission to re-use a rare image of All Black coach Ivan Vodanovitch.

Some of the comments received:

Thanks Karen. I thought last night went off exceptionally well. Dad (Barry Simpson) enjoyed himself and we will look forward to showing him the site. Many thanks for all your hard work. I'm sure this is a site that will be well used. Annette Savage

What a terrific project! Congratulations to you for doing this. I have sometimes seen the odd, battered copy of the magazine in a second hand store and often thought what a great resource they would be. I think this would be great to use as a resource for high school students doing a specific study on past times in Social Studies or History. I hope that that does happen. I hope that other photo news do likewise.Josephine Maplesden

Nelson Photo News Launched

2011-08-10T13:43:16Z

After a long gestation Nelson Photo News on-line was finally launched to an enthusiastic crowd on 18th July 2011.

Barry Simpson (centre-left), the Nelson Photo News chief editor and photographer, with his daughter Annette Savage (centre-right) enjoying themselves with guests at the launch event.

Some of the comments received:

Nearly there - digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

2010-12-16T16:26:12Z

Make it Digital Award winners - University of Waikato Library are blogging their experience of digitising the The British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand:

Work has been proceeding apace on all aspects of the project. The scanning is all done. Thanks NZ Micrographics!

Here in Hamilton at the University of Waikato Library, two teams have been beavering away.

The busy Waikato University Library Team (with Licorice Allsorts) responsible for digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

One has been taking the scanned image files and breaking them up or combining them into their constituent reports and documents to create printable pdf files for each despatch. This is nearing completion though we have noted a small number of images that needed to be rescanned - a few pages with tears and holes and some others with blemishes have been found and new, replacement images are being prepared.

The other team has been reading through the text files after they had been ocr-ed. This has proved a tedious but necessary task and it has shown to staff how much useful and previously unrecognised material is lurking in these pages. We are about three quarters of the way through that proofreading which is correcting only key terms and names, not every word.

Mostly the ocr-ing has produced pages that are true to the original but there have been a few mistakes that we have spotted. We thought you might enjoy some of them:

Scanned text	What it should read:
F. Dillon Hell	F. Dillon Bell
Banged by the neck	Hanged by the neck
And this sum is required to make god	And this sum is required to make good
Such a policy requires a highly organised farce	Such a policy requires a highly organised force
Wellington Bangers	Wellington Rangers
I was assuming powers to which I had no light	I was assuming powers to which I had no right
A lime at least	A time at least
Aimed rebels	Armed rebels
I herewith enclose Major Eraser’s despatch	I herewith enclose Major Fraser’s despatch
Secretary of Slate	Secretary of State
for giants of confiscated lands	for grants of confiscated lands
Loo Papers relating to New Zealand	100 Papers relating to New Zealand
From these farts, you are the responsible tribunal	From these facts, you are the responsible tribunal

Finally, we have begun the process of building the collection and creating the web interface using Greenstone software developed by our colleagues in the University of Waikato Faculty of Computing and Mathematical Sciences.

Given that some documents have been completed we hope to have at least part of the collection live and accessible in the very near future. We will then add further material as it is finished.

Hamilton 15 December 2010

Nearly there - digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

2010-12-16T16:26:12Z

Here in Hamilton at the University of Waikato Library, two teams have been beavering away.

The busy Waikato University Library Team (with Licorice Allsorts) responsible for digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

Mostly the ocr-ing has produced pages that are true to the original but there have been a few mistakes that we have spotted. We thought you might enjoy some of them:

Scanned text	What it should read:
F. Dillon Hell	F. Dillon Bell
Banged by the neck	Hanged by the neck
And this sum is required to make god	And this sum is required to make good
Such a policy requires a highly organised farce	Such a policy requires a highly organised force
Wellington Bangers	Wellington Rangers
I was assuming powers to which I had no light	I was assuming powers to which I had no right
A lime at least	A time at least
Aimed rebels	Armed rebels
I herewith enclose Major Eraser’s despatch	I herewith enclose Major Fraser’s despatch
Secretary of Slate	Secretary of State
for giants of confiscated lands	for grants of confiscated lands
Loo Papers relating to New Zealand	100 Papers relating to New Zealand
From these farts, you are the responsible tribunal	From these facts, you are the responsible tribunal

Great progress digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

2010-10-07T15:36:10Z

Make it Digital Award winners - University of Waikato Library are blogging their experience of digitising the The British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand.

We have been making steady progress with the digitisation of the British Parliamentary papers relating to New Zealand. New Zealand Micrographics were selected to scan and OCR the papers for us and this new partnership was kicked off with an audioconference to discuss the project and refine the details. Many questions were asked and answered, and we all came away feeling more knowledgeable and positive about where we are heading. In order to get the papers to Wellington, New Zealand Micrographics said they would despatch a baby freight container. When it arrived we decided if this was the baby one we did not want to see the grown up version! Our project papers filled approximately one third of the box but with plenty of packaging to tuck them in they were on their way south.

A pilot set of papers have been scanned, passed Quality Control and had the OCR completed. We were impressed with the clarity of the images and agreed that the OCR was sufficiently accurate. We were chomping at the bit, ready to get on with the mass scanning by this time, but there were still some questions to consider, particularly around the file naming and the handling of the non-standard pages (e.g. foldout maps). Eventually, these were resolved after a good number of emails flew along the wires. We really appreciated the input of New Zealand Micrographic Services here, as their experience and suggestions enabled us to make some quick decisions, particularly around the tricky nomenclature issues.

While NZMS started scanning in earnest, back in the Library we were thinking about the search parameters and web interface for the digital collection. National Library’s webpage for their Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives project was launched recently and we were all impressed by its layout and ease of use. Given the similarity of the two projects and our intention to also use Greenstone software, it seems sensible that we should produce a webpage similar in style and function. (We are also great proponents of the library philosophy of making use of shared expertise and not reinventing the wheel!) The master access images have recently arrived from New Zealand Micrographics so we now have two big tasks ahead of us – to combine (and in some cases breakup) page images to create printable PDFs of each despatch, and to proofread and carry out essential edits of the OCRed text.

It definitely feels that we are making progress.

Great progress digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

2010-10-07T15:36:10Z

Make it Digital Award winners - University of Waikato Library are blogging their experience of digitising the The British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand.

It definitely feels that we are making progress.

Nelson Photo News Project Now in Full Swing

2010-09-06T15:45:29Z

Make it Digital Award winners - The Friends of the Nelson Library Microfilm Sub-committee are blogging their experience of working collaboratively to digitise the Nelson Photo News.

Following many years of fundraising, digitisation of the Nelson Photo News by the Nelson Library Microfilm Subcommittee is now in full swing.

Once we had secured sufficient funding, the first step was to put together a full set of magazines and Nelson Public Library were very helpful in handing over their set for the project to use.
To ensure that contaminants weren't passed on to the Nelson Provincial Museum collection, the magazines had to undergo a requisite period of freezing and treating, before condition reporting could commence.

Volunteers at Nelson Provincial Museum then began the task of checking through each copy of the Nelson Photo News checking for marks, defects or missing pages to ensure that the set which was digitised was as complete and pristine as possible.

Nelson Provincial Museum Digital Cataloguing Technician Megan Hansen-Knarhoi and Museum Volunteer Pam Mason work on condition reporting Nelson Photo News issues loaned by Joan Inwood from Richmond for the project

At the end of the process it was found that several additional issues were needed to complete the set. Following a call in local newspapers for owners of Photo News collections to come forward, we were able to secure the missing issues from a private collection.

"Taming the Mighty Maitai" Photo spread Nelson Photo News. 1969, Nelson N.Z. : Logan: 99 (Feb 6), 60-61

"Terrific Fun for a Tremendous Crowd" Image by Barry Simpson, Nelson Photo News Collection: 1394 fr 15

While condition reporting work continued, three issues chosen from the early, middle and end publishing periods were sent away to the digitisation supplier to be used for a pilot test study. These three issues will be digitised in line with the proposal submitted by the supplier and at the end, a working sample of the proposed website will be available for us to look at online. The sample will also include examples of various options so that we can evaluate these and establish our preferences before the full digitisation commences. It will also allow us to check how images appear, the resolution at which they appear and how images could be suppressed if we can not run images because of copyright issues. Once this example has been refined to a working standard, the remainder of the issues will be sent away for the wholesale digitisation work to begin.

"Nelson's Music Industry" photo spread in Nelson Photo News. 1965, Nelson N.Z. : Logan: 51 (Feb 6), 38-39

"Final tests are made by Mr H F Roberts" Barry Simpson, Nelson Photo News Collection: 3285 fr 4