"The UC CEISMIC Digital Archive: Co-ordinating Libraries, Museums, Archives, Individuals and Government Agencies in a Disaster Management Context"

Monday, July 22
Noon
Scholars' Lab

Drinks and cookies provided. Please bring your lunch.

James Smithies
Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities
University of Canterbury
New Zealand

Summary:
The Canterbury region in the South Island of New Zealand has experienced
over 11,000 earthquakes since September 2010, including a devastating
magnitude 6.3 quake on February 22nd 2011 that resulted in the loss of 185
lives. Only months after the February quake, while university staff were
teaching from tents in the approach to winter, a fledgling digital
humanities programme was established that had as its first goal the
development of a national federated digital archive to preserve the vast
quantities of content being produced as a result of the earthquakes. Paul
Millar and James Smithies drew together a Consortium of 10 local and
national agencies representing New Zealand's libraries, museums, archives
and cultural organisations in an effort to ensure a co-ordinated
response.They then led technical development of a national federated
archive, ceismic.org.nz, and a bespoke research archive, quake
studies.canterbury.ac.nz. The CEISMIC archive has recently completed Phase
1 of its technical development, and includes over 20,000 items. Consortium
member organisations, local government agencies, and commercial companies
provide content next to community groups and individuals. Projections
indicate that the archive will hold 100,000 items by the end of 2013. The
intention is to remain operational for the 10-15 years it is expected to
take to rebuild the region. This talk will describe the current state of
the archive, and explain how Millar and Smithies used methods inspired by
the digital humanities community to achieve their goals.

http://www.ceismic.org.nz/