DigitalNZ
One of the highlights of my week in Wellington for LinuxConfAu2010, wasn't anything on the programme. One evening after the sessions were over I took a field trip to the National Library, and had an amazing conversation with Virgina Gow, and Lewis Brown of digitalnz.org. We talked for over an hour, and probably could have kept going for several more, since I think the work they do is so interesting. it was difficult to chop the conversation down to under 30 minutes. I think I included the best bits, and we talk about just what DigitalNZ is, and what type of content you can find there. We talk about how the site works, and how the people who create the site sort of work behind the scenes to facilitate the creation of great digital content related to New Zealand. The mission is to make New Zealand digital content easier to find, share and use. Virginia explains what an api is, and how one of her favorite sites, the Te Papa Tongarewa website, uses it to find useful information for site vistors. Lewis talks about the importance of using open standards when digitizing content, and about the Make It Digital initiative. He also talks about a very interesting case of digitizing the appendices of the Journals of the House of Representatives, and some of the issues with getting that work done. Virgina tells me the exciting news that DigitalNZ will be realasing the source code of the webstie and search utility, and what that means. Lastly, I ask Lewis why the project embraces Free/Open Source Software. Just some of the things we talked about in this episode. I hope you enjoy this episode, a fraction of as much as I enjoyed making it.
I'd like to thank Gravity Computing for sponsoring this episode, and Virgina and Lewis for staying at work late to talk with me.
Filename: newitmake31.mp3 (listen)
Size: 27.5 MB
Recording type: audio/mpeg
