Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

National Digital Forum conference 2009

Every November the New Zealand digital community gets together at the National Digital Forum to share what they’ve learned on web matters and be inspired by overseas visitors. This year the event was held at Te Papa, and the overseas gurus were Daniel Incandela, the very innovative director of new media at the Indianapolis Museum of Art; Nina Simon, a passionate and imaginative independent museum designer; and Jane Finnis the charismatic director of Britain’s Culture24.

A number of the Te Ara staff took two days at the forum to be re-energised. I asked each to write a couple of sentences on their impressions. Here they are:

Philothea, who looks after our copyright issues:

I could say more but as you only asked for two, here they are!

• Great opportunity to network and met people that I am in contact with but hadn’t yet met face to face. Also great to establish new networks and get to meet and speak to other people in institutions that I deal with – I find it makes a huge difference being able to personalise an organisation and have a contact point.
• Really enjoyed the opening day panel on short and sharp presentations, and Daniel Incandela, Jane Finnis and Nina Simon were great.

Emily, who finds images and other resources for our Māori entries:

• The food was an interesting combination of things for one sitting – rice, lamb curry, fish bites, kumara chips and ice-cream.
• The forum on digital repatriation was very interesting – especially the Google translator tool.

Marguerite, who also resources entries:

I liked Ingrid Mason’s paper because she spoke about her responsibility to her community and she mixed conceptual issues with pragmatic solutions. I liked Daniel Incandela’s belief that technology can be personal. I liked the ‘Being online now’ forum and the Twitter forum because they were bite-sized views into exciting projects, and I liked Nina Simon and Jane Finnis for their energy.

Melanie, our senior resourcer:

• I really like Nina Simon’s presentations – both her energy and because she really does seem to bring people/users back into the digital realm.
• I liked hearing about how Christchurch City Libraries are working with other sections of their council to digitise their archives – bringing stuff out that otherwise would be known only to one staff member.
• I liked hearing about the Archives NZ/Ministry of Education project – pity the end result is so frustrating for everyone who isn’t a teacher.

Ross, our production manager:

I came away with three practical ideas for Te Ara to investigate:

• From Jane Finnis (Culture24) – contacting sites that link to our old URLs to ask them to update them.
• From the rights forum, and thanks too to Liam Wyatt (Wikimedia) – moving ahead with creative commons for Te Ara material. And encouraging collecting institutions to use creative commons to help us all manage resources more efficiently.
• From DigitalNZ – using their API (in development) to add more metadata to Te Ara’s records, to improve their usefulness and findability.

Janine, who manages the resources team:

• In an increasingly digital age, this was a great opportunity to meet real people.
• Daniel Incandela’s presentation has inspired me to find ways to include more moving images on Te Ara. And just as an aside to his Flight of the Conchords video – I happened to pass Bret McKenzie on Oriental Parade that very evening! Only in New Zealand.

As for me, the undoubted highpoint was in the forum on Twitter when tweets to NDF were displayed in Soundings Theatre and suddenly we all read: ‘Oh s**t, I did not realise my tweets would appear on the big screen!’ The digital world is full of surprises.

The Beehive – a sketch by Sir Basil Spence

The Beehive has been labelled ugly. According to a website called virtualtourist.com (which is probably trying to make its name with a headline grabber) the Beehive is the third ugliest building in the world. The less than endearing description of the Beehive from the site is ‘a slide projector that fell on a wedding cake that fell on a waterwheel’.

Beehive, Parliament House and the Parliamentary Library

It’s true that, by itself, the Beehive (the executive wing of parliament) looks odd.

It looks even odder when seen next to the other parliamentary buildings. To its left is the modern, Bowen House. To its right is the early 20th-century Edwardian neo-classical Parliament House (which was never finished to its original plan), and to the right of that, the 1899 Victorian neo-gothic Parliamentary Library. An odder collection of sibling buildings would be hard to find. According to Te Ara’s Government and nation entry, these oddly contrasting buildings are an illustration of the casual, haphazard development of both the parliamentary buildings and New Zealand’s system of government.

But, despite the oddity, is odd the same as ugly?

Sir Basil Spence was a world renowned British architect who designed the Beehive, and supposedly gave it its name based on a box of beehive brand matches given to him. Internally, the Beehive has some beautiful finishing including Tākaka marble and Tawa panelling. Externally, it is a tourist attraction that is absolutely unique. As has been noted about the Beehive and its sibling buildings: ‘people love them or hate them’.

Myself, I love the Beehive. What do you think? Is it ugly or unique?

The 1975 Māori land march or hīkoi – a defining moment in New Zealand history

Mid-November is the beginning of the festive season, marked by spectacular Santa parades through city streets. This year Santa is facing competition from a series of street protests. Last Tuesday some 6,000 motorcyclists rumbled into Wellington to protest substantial ACC levy increases. The ‘bikoi’ – adapted from the Māori word hīkoi – assembled outside Parliament to vent their anger and demand the government back down. ACC minister Nick Smith tried to placate the crowd by saying he’d review the proposed change, but was drowned out by shouts of ‘bullshit, bullshit’ from the (not so) easy riders. The (re)born to be wild opposition leader Phil Goff – who had recently purchased a Triumph motorcycle – was welcomed like a prodigal son.

Meanwhile, up in Auckland, Colin Craig’s hope for 50,000 supporters at last Saturday’s march up Queen Street, which he organised to call for the anti-smacking and other citizen-initiated referenda to be binding on government, fell shy of the mark – by around 46,000. With Craig putting $450,000 of his own money into the event, this worked out at around $112 per protester. And it seems that not all of the marchers were there to actually support the cause, judging by the some of the placards which said things like ‘Bring back dancing with the Stars‘ and ‘Carly Binding referendum‘ (Carly Binding being a former member of True Bliss pop group).

Prime Minister John Key was unmoved by the event, suggesting the anti-smacking law was working. Which begs the point as to whether protest marches achieve anything other than make the participants feel part of a common cause?

My first protest march was in 1973 when I marched with my parents in support of the anti-nuclear protest ship Fri. I mostly remember the happy, carnival-like atmosphere, a far cry from the anger and anxiety I experienced during 1981 anti-Springbok tour protests. The protest marches failed to stop the tour, so were they wasted effort?

I thought about these issues while writing a Te Ara entry called ‘Parades and Protests’ for the forthcoming Economy and the City theme. It became clear to me that while most protest marches are quickly forgotten, some – like the 1975 Māori land march – come to be seen as defining moments in New Zealand history.

But what do you think? Are protesters simply whingers or are they exercising an essential democratic right? Have you ever been on one? What was it like? Did it achieve the desired result? And why did Phil Goff buy a Triumph and not a Harley? Was it a personal anti-American protest?

A haven for urban farmers – The Stricklaw Street community garden in Christchurch

Over the past few years or so I’ve noticed that urban people have become more interested in growing their own food than in the recent past. Vegetable and herb gardens, and to a lesser extent small fruit orchards, are cropping up in suburban sections again, and on council reserves and even city streets.

Personal food production is not new in New Zealand – in the past people had to grow their own food or perish. Traditional Māori communities spent a lot of time growing food, mainly introduced plants like kūmara (sweet potato) and later potatoes. Food production was a do-or-die task for early European settlers.

The vegetable plot became a typical feature of the suburban backyard. It’s part of the quarter-acre section romance. Most families were self-sufficient in this way until the 1950s. After this, increased use of pesticides and fertilisers by market gardens meant that it was cheaper and easier to buy produce than grow it yourself. Sections became smaller and busy urbanites were less inclined to maintain them. Have a look at Te Ara’s Gardens entry if you want more history.

What has changed? The rise of the contemporary urban farmer is part of wider interest in issues of environmental sustainability in the 2000s. People are starting to think about how they, as individuals and community members, can work towards feeding themselves rather than relying on national and international food distribution chains. Some are also pursuing an organic lifestyle free of pesticides.

Though commercially grown produce is plentiful and relatively cheap, increasing prices have pushed people back to the vegetable plot. Even apartment dwellers are cultivating tomatoes and lettuces in boxes on balconies. Councils have set aside land for community gardens. In Wellington, olive trees line the streets of inner-city Mt Victoria, and the olives are harvested for oil. At the moment there’s a petition on the Wellington City Council’s website asking the council to plant more food-bearing trees on reserves and roadsides. Many schools, urban as well as rural, have vegetable gardens cultivated by the kids.

It will be interesting to see whether the interest in urban food production is sustained – it is fad, fashion, or are urbanites in it for the long haul?

Lord Howe Island skink – probably unaware that it has just switched genus

Getting it right is a major expectation of Te Ara. But sometimes it’s not us, but our committed users, who put us right. Their emails can take us on fascinating journeys in the pursuit of truth. Recently we had three interesting examples.

The week began when Geoff Patterson wrote in to say that his colleague Dr David Chapple had determined in a recently published research paper that there was only one skink genus (Oligosoma), not two as we claimed in our lizards entry. So I sent this off to the author, Kerry-Jayne Wilson, who read the paper and agreed. Going to change the entry, I found it a little more difficult than I had imagined. The entry stated that of the two skink genera, one was endemic to New Zealand but the other had relatives only on Lord Howe and Norfolk islands (and we had a nice image of the Lord Howe cousin). So I was left wondering whether the Lord Howe Islander was also part of this expanded skink genus, or not. So back to Kerry-Jayne, who confirmed that it was indeed.

A couple of days later a representative of Ngāti Kuia wrote in to say that in the dolphins entry we had incorrectly named the dolphin which accompanied Hinepoupou on her legendary 80-kilometre swim from Kapiti to Rangitoto (D’Urville Island). He pointed out that Hinepoupou was from Ngāti Kuia and they believed the dolphin was called Kaikaiawaro, while we had it as Kahurangi. This time I wrote to John and Hillary Mitchell, who wrote the entry on Te Tau Ihu (the tribes at the north of the South Island). The Mitchells confirmed that Ngāti Kuia’s accepted name for the dolphin was Kaikaiawaro, but that kaumātua of other iwi in the area agreed the name was Kahurangi. So we changed the entry to acknowledge both traditions. Interestingly, it was not only the dolphins entry which needed changing. The open water swimming entry also had the story of Hinepoupou and Kahurangi/Kaikaiawaro (so we updated that too).

The third letter came in from Stephen King, whom I quickly recognised as the famous person who sat on top of the tōtara tree in Pureora Forest in 1978 as a protest against clear-felling. Stephen, now the forest ecologist at Waipoua Forest, asked us to change the reference to toatoa from being common in northern forests to being rare in Northland. He said that at Waipoua the species was found only on one ridge, and he was concerned that people collected bark from the trees for dye. It was important to get the facts right to dissuade people from unnecessary collection. Again, I referred the comment to the original author, in this case Maggy Wassilieff, who noted that she confined the use of the term ‘rare’ to those species that appeared on the published list of ‘Threatened and uncommon plants in New Zealand’. But she accepted that it was indeed not often found in Northland, so we made an appropriate change.

It’s great that our users want to see us get these things right. It shows they care and it is a huge help to us. The job does not stop - just one day after a new law came in banning the use of cell phones while driving, I received an email telling us that we say New Zealand is one of the few developed countries that has not banned cell phones when driving. So, the corrections, and keeping Te Ara up-to-date, continue.