The UC CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive programme was established in 2011 with the aim of preserving the knowledge, memories and earthquake experiences of people of the

Canterbury region Canterbury ( mi, Waitaha) is a region of New Zealand, located in the central-eastern South Island. The region covers an area of , making it the largest region in the country by area. It is home to a population of The region in its current fo ...

. The website provides federated access to a broad range of earthquake-related research material, gathered by leading New Zealand cultural and educational organisations.

Description

UC CEISMIC is a project of the Digital Humanities department at the

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury ( mi, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was ...

, which focuses on principles of openness and collaboration. The project was founded by University of Canterbury Professor Paul Millar following the 2011 Canterbury earthquakes. It was inspired by the

September 11 Digital Archive project September is the ninth month of the year in both the Julian calendar, Julian and Gregorian calendars, the third of four months to have a length of 30 days, and the fourth of five months to have a length of fewer than 31 days. September i ...

developed by the

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), formerly the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), is a research center specializing in history and information technology at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax County, Virgin ...

George Mason University George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was origin ...

. The purpose is to preserve earthquake-related material for future generations, researchers, and other communities that experience disasters. UC CEISMIC is a federated archive, providing public access to a wide range of earthquake-related content, including images, videos, interviews, stories and research material from many content partners.

Metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

from each of the content partners is harvested by

DigitalNZ DigitalNZ is a service run by the National Library of New Zealand and funded by the New Zealand Government hosting New Zealand-related digital media. The service is searchable and shareable, and reuse is allowed where possible. there were more th ...

and fed through to the federated search tool at ceismic.org.nz using DigitalNZ’s API. Content providers include UC QuakeStudies, Kete Christchurch, Ross Becker & Moira Fraser and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. The total number of items publicly available is over 55,000. Lessons learned from the project are shared in chapter 10 of the book Crisis and Disaster in Japan and New Zealand: Actors, Victims and Ramifications.

Consortium

The UC CEISMIC Consortium includes core content contributors, as well as providing members of the programme board. It exists to ensure the programme is sustainable and well managed, and that the digital repository meets international standards. The Consortium is founded upon a Memorandum of Understanding that holds open access and collaboration as two of its key principles.

Consortium members

National Library of New Zealand The National Library of New Zealand ( mi, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa) is New Zealand's legal deposit library charged with the obligation to "enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its interchanges with other nations" (''Nat ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage The Ministry for Culture and Heritage (MCH; ) is the department of the New Zealand Government responsible for supporting the arts, culture, built heritage, sport and recreation, and broadcasting sectors in New Zealand and advising government on ...

* NZ on Screen * Christchurch City Libraries *

Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA; Māori: ''Te Mana Haumanu ki Waitaha'') was the public service department of New Zealand charged with coordinating the rebuild of Christchurch and the surrounding areas following the 22 Februar ...

* Canterbury Museum *

Te Papa The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is New Zealand's national museum and is located in Wellington. ''Te Papa Tongarewa'' translates literally to "container of treasures" or in full "container of treasured things and people that spring fr ...

* Archives New Zealand *

Ngai Tahu Research Centre Ngai (also called Múrungu or Enkai) is the monolithic Supreme God in the spirituality of the Kikuyu (or Gikuyu) and the closely related Embu, Meru and Kamba groups of Kenya, and the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania. Ngai is creator of the universe a ...

The New Zealand Film Archive ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in En ...

UC QuakeStudies

UC QuakeStudies UC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two ** '' University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme * Universal Century, one of the ti ...

is the research component of UC CEISMIC, and one of several repositories that the CEISMIC search engine harvests material from. It is a secure, access-controlled repository, built and hosted at the

, with the purpose of preserving a digital record of the earthquakes and the rebuild, and to facilitate future research. Earthquake-related content is sourced by the UC CEISMIC programme office from researchers, community groups, and other organisations and individuals. Content is then organised, described and stored in online collections. Qualitative

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

such as geo-locations, dates, file sizes, tags and categories is added where possible by the programme office team. The QuakeStudies archive includes large content collections such as

Fairfax Media Fairfax Media was a media company in Australia and New Zealand, with investments in newspaper, magazines, radio and digital properties. The company was founded by John Fairfax as John Fairfax and Sons, who purchased ''The Sydney Morning Herald' ...

Environment Canterbury Environment Canterbury, frequently abbreviated to ECan. is the promotional name for the Canterbury Regional Council. It is the regional council for Canterbury, the largest region in the South Island of New Zealand. It is part of New Zealand's s ...

, Gap Filler, New Zealand Historic Places Trust, QuakeBox, urban regeneration projects and a digitised copy of The Pledge. It also holds content contributed by individuals and community groups, such as records of blog posts by members of the Christchurch Bloggers group and a variety of photographs and videos.

References

External links

UC CEISMIC website

UC QuakeStudies website
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