RLUK’s Digital Shift Forum brings together colleagues from across the information, research, cultural and heritage communities, and third and commercial sectors, to discuss the future of the digital shift in collections, services, and audiences.
The series aims to promote cross-sector discussion and debate, to enable knowledge exchange, and inspire collaborative endeavour across sectors and communities, for the benefit of RLUK members and the wider research and information management communities.
The Digital Shift Forum is open to all, and you do not need to belong to an RLUK member institution to attend or participate.
Kua mua, ka muri: Using our digital experiences to look back and move forward at the Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand
Jessica Moran, Associate Chief Librarian, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand
Mark Crookston, Programme Director, Documentary Heritage, National Library of New Zealand
24 March 2021, 14:00 – 15:00 (GMT)
Ka mua, ka muri is a Māori whakatouki (proverb) meaning ‘walking backward into the future’. In 2020 the Alexander Turnbull Library (the research library within the National Library of New Zealand) celebrated its centenary. 100 years of building, protecting and providing research services to national collections covering a comprehensive range of publications, artistic expression, and archival documentation – analogue, digitised and (increasingly) born digital. This presentation outlines how we used the centenary to reflect on our experiences with digital shifts thus far and look forward to what we aspire to be as a research library. It will focus on the key challenges and opportunities provided by digital – building representative research collections, addressing challenges of sustainability, and the scale and ephemeral nature of born digital. Our efforts to meet researcher expectations, our work to build research communities, and the development of the staff skills and culture to meet the present and future digital shifts and requirements of being a digital research library will also be discussed.