Digital preservation programme
The goal of the digital preservation programme is to enable us to meet our mandate to collect, make accessible, and preserve in perpetuity, New Zealand’s digital heritage, as defined by the Library's collection policy.
National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA)
Born digital and digitised items created or collected by the Library are held in the library’s digital preservation repository, the National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA).
The NDHA went live in October 2008 and is maintained by the National Library’s Preservation, Research & Consultancy (PRC) team. (I mana te NDHA i te Whiringa-ā-nuku 2008, ā, e tiakina ana e te rōpū Matapoporetanga, Rangahau me te Mātanga o Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.)
As of 30 June 2024, the National Digital Heritage Archive holds:
50.5 million master files
spanning across 270 different formats, and
consisting of 1 petabyte of data.
Brief history of the NDHA
In 2003, the National Library of New Zealand Act was passed providing the mandate for the Library to begin collecting and preserving New Zealand’s digital heritage in ways that ensure current and future access. This resulted in the establishment of the National Library’s digital preservation programme.
In 2004 the Library launched its National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA) project, the foundation for its digital preservation programme. The NDHA programme was developed within the framework provided by NASA’s Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model.
In 2006 the Library formed a development partnership with Ex Libris to build a digital archive and preservation management system and the resulting Rosetta digital preservation system was launched in October 2008.
We celebrated our 10 year anniversary in 2018. We have documented key milestones achieved by the NDHA programme in our NDHA timeline 2003-2018 document.
NDHA timeline 2003-2018 (pdf, 420KB)
The OAIS reference model — article on the OCLC website
What we collect and preserve
The Library collects a wide range of digital material, including:
websites
digital publications
eBooks
photographs
cartoons
music
videos
oral history, and
emails.
These items are actively collected under the mandate of the National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa) Act 2003 and as defined by the Library's collection policy.
The Library also receives public donations of digital and non-digital material that are not published or available online. The Library has its own in-house image and sound digitisation programmes.
The Library also has its own digitisation programmes, the focus of these are the newspapers, audio, and image collections. Almost all of this digitised material is preserved in the Library’s digital preservation system.
National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa) Act 2003
National Library of New Zealand Collections Policy
Digital Preservation strategic documents
We have a number of guiding documents, policies and strategy documents that guide our digital preservation programme.
Digital Preservation Strategy
The National Library and Archives New Zealand have a shared policy programme for digital preservation activities. We are committed to working together to preserve digital content. The strategy ensures that the digital content is managed and preserved in a way that reflects its status as a knowledge asset and taonga of New Zealand.
Digital Preservation Strategy (pdf, 430KB)
Digital Preservation Policy Manual
Our 'Digital Preservation Policy Manual' outlines the processes and operating rules that the Digital Preservation Team at Archives and the Library are required to follow in the course of caring for the digital content.
Related content
Digital preservation team
The National Library's Digital Preservation and Data Capability team is responsible for the long-term authenticity and integrity of the National Library’s digital collections.