INDUSTRY

National Library of New Zealand to Drive Digital Futures in Libraries, a First for New Zealand-- Sun Microsystems today announced the National Library of New Zealand is collaborating with the company to create next-generation digital libraries. Together the organizations will develop the technical architecture to support the library's National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA) Program, a national initiative to access, manage and preserve New Zealand's digital heritage. New Zealand became one of the first countries in the world to bring legal deposit into the digital domain and to legislate preservation strategies. Adhering to the mandate of the National Library Act of 2003, New Zealand will be the first country in the Southern Hemisphere to implement a solution for the preservation of national digital heritage that reflects the need for persistence of that heritage 'in perpetuity'. Under the collaboration, the National Library and Sun will develop an advanced information lifecycle management system, which will serve as an international model for the implementation of digital repositories and preservation management. This system will ensure the long-term storage and preservation of New Zealand's digital material and provide authenticity and integrity of data with almost 100 percent availability. Additionally, the National Library has been named a Sun Center of Excellence. "The strategic importance behind this initiative is a technology change which underpins all aspects of the library's responsibilities and services. Both print and electronic information is being produced at an extraordinary rate. However, electronic data now makes up the majority of all unique, original output and the gap between the two is widening," said Penny Carnaby, National Librarian and Chief Executive of the National Library of New Zealand. "The key objective is to make New Zealand's digital heritage available in perpetuity. We do not want to fail the future by leaving a gap in New Zealand's history because we were too slow or unwilling to confront the challenge of digital preservation now," added Carnaby. "Reflecting a growing need for technology as part of cultural and academic initiatives, libraries and universities are looking at ways to better use digital information to improve the capture, preservation and access to national archives" said Jim Hassell, managing director, Sun Microsystems Australia and New Zealand. "Working with institutions such as the National Library of New Zealand, Sun can help New Zealand citizens benefit from a true digital model based upon a solid IT environment with next-generation applications. This joint digital library initiative will reduce the cost of managing data and, in the future, will revolutionize the way students and citizens can access information," said Hassell. The National Library of New Zealand's NDHA Program aims to develop an end-to-end process for the care and handling of digital material. This will ensure the protection of New Zealand's national cultural heritage for future generations and will support the New Zealand government's Digital Strategy, which aims to: - Strengthen national identity and uphold the Treaty of Waitangi through reflecting the digital identities of New Zealanders and making that visible on the international stage. - Promote the development of an inclusive and increasingly creative economy. - Foster the development of digital preservation practices that will form an essential foundation to the take-up of e-government and the trust of the e-citizen. - Provide a framework to encourage and assist New Zealanders to improve their technical and information literacy skills. - Create fairer educational opportunities. The proposed solution will be international in scope, able to be replicated in other organizations that wish to preserve and mine information, and provide scalability over time. The National Library will be creating an environment and standards for managing and operating digital repositories that will be applicable to the whole digital preservation community. This development of a best practice in digital preservation should be reusable by Sun Microsystems through its global reference architecture program. "Sun Microsystems announcing the Library as a Centre of Excellence recognizes that we are at the forefront of global digital preservation endeavors," said Carnaby. The National Library of New Zealand has online archives of photography, art, newspapers, music and visual and audio historical documents. Without digital preservation, many of the critical materials for research, education and cultural benefit are at risk from data format changes, media migration, bit loss, application/operating environment shifts and unavailable access. "The government is delighted that the National Library of New Zealand has been accorded Sun Centre of Excellence status. The National Library is leading a vital component of the government's digital strategy by pioneering the digitization and dissemination of unique Kiwi content," said Hon David Cunliffe, Minister of Communications and Information Technology. "That builds both National identity and competitive advantage. The value of this award can be expected to be seen in future opportunities to leverage collaboration between Sun, the National Library and other government agencies," continued Cunliffe. While the library already leverages Sun's local consulting expertise, as well as Sun New Zealand partner Gen-i's, the association with Sun will give the National Library of New Zealand access to the significant Intellectual Property, innovation, Research and Development that reside within Sun Microsystems globally, supplementing the library's capacity and drawing it into Sun's Centre of Excellence community. "Our newly improved storage capability as a result of the recent StorageTek acquisition enables us to offer the National Library the most reliable enterprise-class data management systems to cope with its digital preservation efforts," said Kim Jones, vice president, global education and research for Sun Microsystems. The National Library of New Zealand's digital effort builds on its expertise in preservation and archiving combined with Sun's rock-solid open systems to manage access to thousands of images, electronic publications and information services.