Digitising audiovisual items — Utaina project milestone

Utaina milestone, first audiovisual items digitised

The Utaina team has been hard at work over the last year, and the last few months have been full of important milestones for the project. Our Archives and Library teams have done extensive work to survey, prepare, catalogue, box, and plan for items to be digitised at this scale. So in November, it was very exciting to see the first items from the National Library’s 106,000 audiovisual (AV) collections digitised.

The digitisation journey started with a special ceremony. The tikanga process was led by Anahera Morehu, Kaihautū Archives NZ (and current Chief Archivist) and Ruki Tobin, Kaihautū National Library. The items were then transferred to Avalon Studios and Memnon Digitisation studios, escorted by staff.

We gathered to wish the first collection items (and all future items over the life of the project) safe travels as they left their whare, on their journey to Memnon’s digitisation studios in Motutawa. This is a round trip that will be made every week for the next two and a half years between the Library, Archives and Memnon. It’s important to set the process properly — for the items themselves and for all the kaimahi who will see them on that journey including our partners in Crown FIL and Memnon.

We then travelled with the items to Motutawa, where we were welcomed into Memnon’s space with karakia to acknowledge the importance of the journey and the mahi taking place at Memnon. The items and their wairua (and ongoing journey between the two spaces) were acknowledged and welcomed. We then shared kai, and felt safe and prepared for the next stage of our mahi.

With the first shipment of items delivered to Memnon, the digitisation of the National Library and Archives audiovisual material is underway.

What’s in the first batch of items to be digitised?

The first batch consisted of audio cassettes — a mix of both music and oral histories from the Alexander Turnbull Library’s collections — is a small selection representing the diverse range of subject matter in the collections.

Some of the items in this first batch included an interview with Margaret Mahy, a Crowded

House single from the Anthony Norton collection, and recordings relating to the Ringatu Church from Radio New Zealand.

Following digitisation by Memnon, the digital files are checked in our purpose-built quality control (QC) studios by a dedicated team of project QC technicians.

Event to celebrate this Utaina milestone

We took the opportunity celebrate this milestone with an event at the National Library. The event was attended by the Minister of Internal Affairs Hon. Jan Tinetti, Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Hon. Kiritapu Allan, Hon. George Angene, Minister of Cultural Development, Cook Islands and our digitisation partner Memnon CEO, Heidi Shakespeare. It was a special evening, and lovely to connect and celebrate with our Ngā Taonga colleagues and our digitisation partner.

We look forward to 2023 when the momentum will pick up and the volume of collections digitised will increase.

It's wonderful to see this important work underway to preserve the Library’s valuable AV material, and even better to be on our way to improving access and connecting users with this content.