A day in the life of an exhibitionist at LIANZA 11

Well done local Committee and organising teams, you’ve clearly done a brilliant job – now it’s up to us!

Welcome to Wellington - 10 reasons to come and see us at Stand 23 in the MFC

(Or the things we learnt from Family History Researchers).  It is an on-going and long term project at NZMS is digitising the Stone’s directories and making them searchable.  Several volumes are now available on CD Rom.  We took a few samples along to the Wellington Family History Expo 2011 – I wish we had brought more.  We have worked closely with the CD Roms ourselves and have got wonderful and useful feedback from librarians but this was the first time we had really seen them in use.  It was very affirming watching Family History Researchers get stuck in and make full use of the search functionality.  Plus those magic words “I wouldn’t have found this in the paper version” which means we are on the right track.

2 million newspaper pages on Papers Past is an impressive total but it does leave the question of what about the 18 million or so pages still on microfilm?  NZMS bought our STViewScan microfilm viewer/scanner along to the Wellington Family History Expo and interestingly some attendees thought we were using Papers Past.  It was fun to let people experience the new technology.  The STViewScan is easy to load and browse and when you have found what you want the software gives you lots of options to select, capture and enhance. Bringing a little Papers Past functionality to microfilm collections.

 Thanks to all those involved in organising the Wellington programme of events – everything I attended was interesting, informing and mildly addictive.  The absolute highlight was the Wellington based Family History Expo.  NZMS had a stand there.  In the weeks beforehand we considered how to best showcase our services for the genealogy audience.  We had a good rummage through Andy’s family history artefacts and came up with a collection which presented an interesting story and showcased the range of NZMS equipment and skills.  An old family bible, pages of photo albums, medals and regalia, photos, framed photos and certificates, group photos (with Andy highlighted), birth telegrams (with some digital restoration), birth notices from newspaper microfilm. Thanks to everyone who visited us, asked questions about our services and told us their stories.  We had a fabulous time.

A short blog about my experience staging a "Tweetup" Event in Wellington, including comments about the value of Social Media as a Business tool.

I’m looking forward to MA11 = Museums Aotearoa Conference in Nelson tomorrow.  The programme looks stimulating despite being spread over a few venues, and the fact that Speakers have presented in other cities has upped the momentum; generated anticipation.  I even heard a snippet about a presentation to the Nelson Provincial Museum of the personal journal of the Lord Auckland’s surgeon happening during the Conference – brilliant!  For me I will experience the usual personal conflict of being genuinely interested in the goings on inside the museums who endeavour to preserve our culture for future generations versus the opportunity to tell people what NZMS does – being a sales person if you will.  My usual philosophy is to enjoy the conference for all it offers – to the max – and hope I can enhance the experience of those around me accordingly. I’ve experienced 3D photography recently, and wonder if there is interest in the field from within the museum sector?  At the demonstration I could see the camera’s are...

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Here's an extract from a Forum I posted on the NDF Ning preaching the value of sharing, collaboration, helping and interoperability as well as calling for input on what YOU would like in the TENTH NDF Conference next year (29-30 Nov 2011).

Please give me your thoughts AND visit the Ning for more detail:

http://ndf-aotearoa.ning.com/forum/topics/ndf2010-ndf2011-lets-get

More bad news for the Digital Community. We discovered this week that the BCR’s CDP (Collaborative Digitisation Programme) is no longer providing digital and preservation services.

BCRs CDP evolved out of the internationally acclaimed Colorado Digitization Programme and has, most critically, been maintaining the Digital Imaging Best Practices guidelines. This was originally published as the Western States Digital Imaging Best Practices. These guidelines are widely followed and cited by cultural heritage institutions and form the basis of much of our own practice at NZMS.

Version 2.0 was released in June 2008 and we have directed a lot of people to it who are looking for advice on implementing digitisation projects.

The best practices documents are still available at www.bcr.org/dps/cdp/best/index.html but with the BCR “in the process of phasing out its operations” we are not sure how much longer they will persist.