Spines of books about digital preservaton, titles include 'Web Archiving' and 'Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries'.

Our digital preservation publications

Read research papers and presentations related to digital preservation, published by the members of the Digital Preservation and Data Capability team at the National Library of New Zealand.

Get in touch

Please contact the team for a copy of a publication if there is no link in the listing below. Email us at ndha.admin@dia.govt.nz

2022

Gengenbach, M. (2022, November 2). Reviving Digital Preservation Policies at National Library of New Zealand Blog post on Digital Preservation Coalition website.

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

Pre-2008

Legacy documents

Our digital preservation system is based on a series of business requirements and documents developed by the National Library from 2004 to 2006.

NDHA Business Requirements Specification (pdf, 580KB)
NDHA Business Requirements Specification Appendices (pdf, 310KB)
NDHA Functional Requirements Specification (zip, 3MB)

For more background information please refer to the following documents:

Digital Library Development review report (pdf, 2.1MB)
Digital Library Development Recommendations(2003) (pdf, 45KB)
NDHA Programme Fact Sheet July 2008 (pdf, 390KB)
NDHA Factsheet October 2008 (pdf, 125KB)
Sun Microsystems Case Study: Digital Preservation at the National Library of New Zealand (pdf, 295KB)

NDHA in the news

13 June 2022 — Conference and Meetings World (CMW)

Wellington set for 2025 international digital conference

New Zealand’s capital city is set to host the iPRES 21st International Conference on Digital Presentation, which will take place in 2025 at Tākina, Wellington’s Convention and Exhibition Centre. iPRES, the oldest international conference about long-term digital preservation, is an annual event that brings hundreds of researchers and practitioners from across the world to discuss the latest research and practice for protecting and making accessible digital collections.

11 January 2020 — RNZ

Preserving our history with the National Library’s digital archive

Collecting the web — how's that for an impossible sounding task. Steve Knight and Jessica Moran gather online material that is a record of the social, cultural, and political expression of New Zealanders but there are tricky issues like sites promoting hate and other offensive material. They look at gathering tweets and other social media in the way the library used to collect famous people's journals and letters.

24 August 2019 — Stuff

How the National Library preserves New Zealand's digital heritage

‘The National Library began experimenting with web archiving back in 1999, but has been sucking up websites in earnest since 2008. It's a two-pronged programme – with both broad and targeted collecting. Every year a web crawler vacuums up the whole New Zealand domain, taking copies of every website ending in .nz…’

17 May 2019 — Scoop

Taking retro tech lovers back to the future

Jay Gattuso, a digital preservation specialist, will talk about the complexities of collecting, preserving and providing access to a range of complex ‘born digital’ objects and the experiences they create. Learn about how the library is coping with the fact that by 2020, it’s estimated that 1.7MB of data will be created every second for every person on earth…'

3 August 2016 — Scoop

Born Digital 2016: National Library of New Zealand celebrates inaugural digital preservation week

'The National Library of New Zealand together with libraries across Australia will celebrate the inaugural digital preservation week, Born Digital 2016, from August 8–12. Born Digital 2016 aims to raise awareness of the importance of preserving digital content for the public good and as a record of New Zealand’s and Australia’s history in digital form.'

29 October 2014 — Scoop

The New Zealand Gazette Moves into the Digital Age

'Michele Clarke, The Gazette’s Chief Publisher and Team Leader said, “The project brought together the National Library’s Digital Preservation and Collection teams to formulate the procedure to seamlessly load published notices into the National Digital Heritage Archive. This fulfils the legislative requirement for Gazette preservation and is an example for the growing demand for preserving information that is digitally generated.”'

18 June 2013 — The Dominion Post

Snap-happy but easy come, easy go

'Natalie Marshall, the Alexander Turnbull Library's photograph curator, thought the National Digital Heritage Archive, launched in 2009, would help to keep New Zealand's digital heritage safe. The archive stores CDs, DVDs and digital materials, including images.'

9 April 2013 — Computerworld

National Library ahead of UK in web harvesting

'New Zealand’s National Library is well ahead of UK efforts to harvest and preserve web content. Six libraries in the UK, including the national institution, the British Library, will now start collecting, preserving and providing long term access to the nation's digital output - including blogs, e-books and the entire UK web domain. The key step has been to get legal and regulatory apparatus in place to provide for “legal deposit”. New Zealand, however, has had legislation in place since 2003 and appropriate regulations since 2006…'

1 October 2012 — New Zealand Future Five

NZ National Library collects millionth digital Pic

'An image of an exuberant, expectant group of fans waiting for the 2011 Rugby World Cup victory parade has become the one millionth digital ‘object’ to be added to the National Library’s collection of digital heritage material. Through a collection of photographs (it’s identified as No. 19) relating to the Rugby World Cup 2011, images donated by Wellington photographer and librarian Dylan Owen made the milestone…'

5 January 2011 — The Library of Congress

New Zealand Develops New Tools, Policies for Digital Preservation

'While the saying "New Zealand is far from everywhere" may be true, distance is not an issue regarding its digital cultural collections and how efficiently the National Library of New Zealand makes them available over the Internet. For a small country (population approximately 4,367,700 as of June 2010), it has made wise choices that have resulted in an exemplary cyberinfrastructure and national digital library. Over recent years , the NLNZ has moved towards aggregating its online collections and high-tech resources under an initiative called the National Digital Heritage Archive…'

4 November 2008 — Ex Libris

The Ex Libris Digital Preservation System Goes Live at the National Library of New Zealand

'The Digital Preservation System is the keystone of the National Library of New Zealand project to preserve the nation’s cultural heritage for the benefit of future generations. Jerusalem, Israel and Wellington, New Zealand – November 4, 2008. Ex Libris™ Group is pleased to announce that after a successful beta-testing period at the National Library of New Zealand…'