No images? Click here He Kohinga Maharahe mauhanga kitea, ka hoki ngā mahara Tēnā koutouWelcome to this edition of our newsletter. We’ve had a busy couple of months at Te Rua Mahara, so now seems like a good time to let you know what we’ve been up to. After our exciting announcement in August about funding to progress the design and planning for our new Wellington building, readying ourselves for the move in 2024 is top of our minds. Our aim is that the new building will signify not just a change in location, but a transformed way of working, in line with our 2057 strategy. And we haven’t stopped there. Part of the preparatory work we need to do before we can move includes getting our new archives management system (AIMS) up and running. Without it, the logistics of moving our collections would be far more challenging, so I’m thrilled so see an agreement with Axiell signed last month. With all that we’ve achieved in the past few months, I know we have staff more than ready for a well-earned break. Archives will be closing at noon on Friday 20th December and re-opening on Monday 6th January. Kia pai te wā whakataa – happy holidays Ngā mihi
New home for New Zealand’s taongaI’m sure you’ve heard the exciting news about plans for a new building for Archives. We received funding in this year’s Budget to progress design and resource consent planning for a Wellington facility on the corner of Mulgrave and Aitken streets. The new building will be connected to the National Library via an air bridge, giving us the unique opportunity to create a national documentary heritage campus. Archives New Zealand Aitken Street concept Improving our understanding of government information managementLast month we released our first ever digital version of the Chief Archivist report on the State of Government Recordkeeping. Earlier this year public offices and local authorities took part in the Archives New Zealand's Survey of Public Sector Information Management. For public offices, the survey was mandated, and we received a great response. The surveyed organisations provided us with valuable insights into the current performance of public sector information management so that we can better understand the issues the sector faces. Over the last few months we have analysed the survey results and produced a findings report, which is available to read here. The raw data has been published as an open dataset to support further analysis. You can view the dataset on data.govt.nz. The findings have also been used to inform the Chief Archivist’s Report on the State of Government recordkeeping 2018/19. For the first time the Chief Archivist’s Report on the State of Government recordkeeping is an interactive digital report. We are part of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and are leading Commitment 10, which supports trust in government. We are developing a new approach to monitoring and publicising how well government is managing information. The survey makes up one component of the framework and will:
You can find out more about the OGP and the Monitoring Framework on our website. New partnership with Axiell will improve access to our archivesLast month we welcomed a new partnership with Axiell, the world’s leading supplier of software to the cultural sector, to manage our unique archives. We will replace our collection management and search tool, Archway, with Axiell Collections so that our staff can work more efficiently, and New Zealanders can have better access to the nation’s taonga and public archives. The new portal based on Axiell Arena will make discoverability and access to the archival collections easier for customers which include; writers, academics, legal researchers, professional historians, journalists, genealogists, and film and documentary makers. In addition, Axiell will establish a hosting centre in the region, which meets the high security standards the institution and the New Zealand government holds. Being in partnership with Axiell will provide us with the flexibility to upgrade and improve their systems, and to create the best possible user experience. The work is estimated to take just over 18 months, launching in the first half of 2021. Answers to some of the Frequently Asked Questions about the change can be found on our website. We will be looking to talk to user groups as we implement this system. If you are interested in being involved, please send us an email at archives.online@dia.govt.nz The Archives New Zealand and Axiell teams Updates to our websitesWe welcome your feedback! Please help us by taking our quick survey of your experience on archives.govt.nz. In June we launched a brand new archives.govt.nz website with a fresh look on a slick new platform and we have continued to work to improve our site even further since. One of the goals of this project is to consolidate some of our other microsites into one. These microsites are not widely used, and the platforms and software are unsupported, so we plan to shut them down. We have begun building and reimagining them within the new archives.govt.nz and are excited to announce that the National Collection of War Art that formally sat on warart.archives.govt.nz is now live on our main site. This includes improved accessibility, zooming and panning, as well as better searching and filtering options. You can read more about how we developed our new website on digital.govt.nz If you notice a bug or would like to share your experience with our website, please email webmaster-archives@dia.govt.nz Minimum requirements for government content services in governmentIn September, the Chief Archivist signed off on a set of minimum requirements for all content management systems offered through the government marketplace. This is a huge step in the right direction to enable better government information management. We worked with the Department of Internal Affairs’ Commercial Strategy and Delivery team in the office of the Government Chief Digital Officer to develop these minimum requirements for systems that manage government information. The requirements are based on Archives New Zealand’s Information and Records Management standard, with a small number of additional requirements adopted from the draft ISO standard ISO / DIS 16175-1:2019. Survey of Public Sector Information Management report is liveNo-limits film footageJust this week, we’ve removed limitations on copies of film footage from the National Film Unit collections. Previously, researchers could only request up to three minutes in total of footage, or a full ‘story’ from a newsreel film. The Archives Leadership Team made the decision that this limit got in the way of our goal to take archives to the people. Researchers were struggling to keep their requests under this time limit, and archivists were having trouble editing around footage selections. This is another small way we’re enabling our users to discover, use, celebrate and connect with our collections. You can find out more about the National Film Unit, which represents Archives’ largest film holdings, on our website. Records containing personal information at ArchivesIn July it was discovered that personal information about individuals was available in open access files in our archives. This information was in files with general administrative titles which were transferred to Archives in 1989, prior to the passing of legislation which governs our current approach to privacy and information management. We’ve been working with agencies to review these and similar records. Any files with personal information have been restricted. This issue has highlighted just how important accurate information management is, and how long-lasting the effects of inaccurate classification can be. New regulatory statementsIn August we released a new version of the Appraisal Statement. We also introduced the Public Sector Archival Selection Statement and a Disposal Statement. We’ve tweaked these three statements to clarify appraisal and disposal decisions for public sector records. Our reading rooms: change is comingLast month we announced that we are changing our reading room hours from March 2020. We have been prioritising digital access to our taonga. It’s a significant piece of mahi that requires a lot of resource and we had to make some changes to account for that. After lots of discussion and a 36,737% increase in views of digitised records – we acknowledged the need to focus on easier access to taonga digitally. We decided to change our reading room hours so that our reading room staff could be available to help foster this shift to better digital access. Digitisation is both a preservation method and a means of providing one-to-many access. Over time, the more of our taonga we have digitised, the better for both preservation and access. You can find out what records are digitised and online already on our what's been digitised page on our website. From Monday 2 March 2020, the opening hours for our reading rooms across the country will be 9am – 1pm for our Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin reading rooms. This change does not impact on our remote research services. Some of the Frequently Asked Questions about the change can be found on our website. To learn more about our direction for the future of Archives take a look at our 2057 strategy. We understand that this announcement will be disappointing to some of our supporters. This has been a hard decision to make but one that will support long-term benefits for all our valued users. We appreciate your continued support during this time of change. |