Launch of "The Prow" : a digital library of local history from NZ

Another luscious digital project funded by the NZ Digital Strategy was launched today. Congratulations to the development team; it is beautiful!

"The Prow collects and makes accessible stories from the Top of the South - Te Tau Ihu o waka a Maui.  Each story stands alone as an illustrated snapshot of an event, person or activity, but is also a starting point for further research, with full lists of and links to sources and resources. Our stories been written by contracted writers, including Hilary and John Mitchell, who have contributed many Maori stories, and fully researched by Library staff.

A key feature of the site is that it is interactive, allowing people to comment on, or add to, our stories, or to add a story of their own.

The Prow is a collaborative venture between Nelson Public Libraries, the lead partner, Tasman and Marlborough District Libraries, the Nelson Provincial Museum and Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology. It was funded by the Digital Strategy Community Partnership Fund.

For further information, please contact Nicola Harwood, the Project Manager."

Cuba Street Memories

Delighted to see that Wellington City Libraries have got their Kete up and running: Cuba Street Memories.

To find out more read the press article or the WCL blog post.

Europeana Library.

At the Bridging Worlds conference in Singapore last month, I was lucky enough to hear Fleur Stigler talking about her work with The European Library and Europeana site. You can access her paper from my post in Kete.

Well Europeana launched last week, with around 3 million digital items, including paintings, photos, films, books, maps and manuscripts from 1,000 museums, national libraries and archives across Europe. Unfortunately the site crashed only a couple of hours later. Turns out the response from the world was insane - 10 million hits and hour - and completely overwhelmed the system.

Fantastic I say. Simply proves the very real, global interest in such an initiative. Europeana will be up and running again sometime in December once they have revamped the technological problems.

Some interesting facts:

• Content includes the full score of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the French Declaration Human Rights of 1789, the English Magna Carta, Dante's Divine Comedy and the Gutenberg Bible.
• Material is free of copyright.
• Half of the objects are French more>>
• Aim is to have 10 million objects by 2010.

Click here to view a video previewing the site.