Building an Aotearoa New Zealand-wide Digital Curation Community of Practice

Abstract

How do you build awareness and capability for digital curation knowledge and experience across a country? The National Library of New Zealand has a statutory role in supporting and advancing the work of Aotearoa New Zealand libraries to ensure documentary heritage and taonga is collected and preserved across the country’s memory system. This role includes supporting the collecting and curation of born-digital content. Aotearoa New Zealand’s Gallery Library Archive Museum (GLAM) sector is small but varied and diverse, so requires a flexible and adaptive plan to grow experience and capability in this area. This paper will describe the background research undertaken to gain a better understanding of the current environment, describe the development and delivery of pilot training in managing born-digital archival content, and outline our next steps. Driving this effort has been two foundational principles: 1) theory and practice are always in conversation with each other and practical hands-on experience is as important as theoretical knowledge and understanding; and 2) the work of growing capability should be done in a spirt of collaboration and partnership, meeting each other as equals and learning from each other.