A mass digitisation project which has already preserved nearly 400,000 audio-visual files from New Zealand’s history is near completion.
The items came from the collections of Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision, Archives New Zealand and the National Library, dated from the 1920s through to the 21st century.
The project included material from TVNZ, Radio NZ, Waitangi Tribunal, Whakaata Māori and the former NZ Film Archive.
Ngā Taonga Utaina director Kate Roberts told 1News that without digitisation, much of the material could have been lost forever.
“The items we digitised were all magnetic media and they were never meant to last, they were always meant to be migrated,” she said.
“This is the year that it was predicted that a lot of those materials would be completely inaccessible.”
National Library Chief Librarian Jess Moran said it was one of the only projects of this scale that has ever been attempted.
“It’s the first step in unlocking this kind of material so that future generations of New Zealanders have access to it,” she said.
“Not just that it’s preserved but it’s actually accessible, people will be able to use it, to listen to it.”
Now down to the last few hundred files, Utaina was on track to be completed in December.
