Unlocking Digital Content and throwing away the key: connecting New Zealanders to information important to all aspects of their lives

Abstract
Libraries are hubs of digital content, they are creative, innovative places and virtual spaces where people engage, connect, learn, innovate and create new knowledge. This is a story about an energetic, lively and strategic library profession in New Zealand which has helped shape its country’s Digital Strategy (2005) and how we think about digital content as a country, whether it be for social, economic or cultural wellbeing.

One of the three pillars of the Digital Strategy will be Content. The New Zealand Government plans to launch New Zealand’s Digital Content Strategy in December this year and the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa is the lead agency for this all embracing pan Government and community strategy.

It is a strategy which traverses three views of content. The formal, authorised ‘tomb’ of content which librarians know well, content which has a commercial, intellectual or culture worth or rights attached to it and finally (and importantly!) ‘anarchic’ content, the informal, unauthorised citizens created content which is the world of Web 2.0, wiki, blogs, vblogs etc.

So how have the Libraries of New Zealand connected with the imagining and delivery of the Digital Content Strategy and importantly how will the Strategy re-shape, re-energise and perhaps even redesign next generation library services? How will the Libraries of New Zealand provide leadership in connecting “New Zealanders to information important to all aspects of their lives?”