A librarian in cyberspace

Graham Coe

Graham Coe says he is cack-handed when it comes to using technology, but his desire to realise the potential of the digital age has made it a key part of his life.

"I'm interested in working with people to say: 'Here's the problem - what can we do today that we couldn't do yesterday?"'

Coe, the director of digital innovations services at the National Library, is charged with preserving the nation's electronic information heritage - saving and protecting the flood of cyber-content being created.

It's a job that demands some tech-savviness, and it's not one that comes without concerns. For the 61-year-old Coe, the worry is that technology has the potential to alienate as well as inspire. The march of technology could leave behind a trail of digitally isolated communities - in another five years about half of all New Zealanders are still unlikely to have access to broadband-speed internet at home, he says.

To combat this digital alienation he advocates using technology to develop both virtual and physical communities - what he calls e-democracy.

Coe wants to see The People's Network project, part of the Government's Digital Strategy, used to ensure no New Zealander is left behind.

He says the project, currently at the drawing board stage, aims to further develop local community libraries as points of public access to the internet.

He says a study into the effects of a similar UK project showed communities left digitally isolated became "disenchanted", while their connected neighbours took comfort in their technological inclusion.

As head of the National Digital Heritage Archive, Coe is embarking on a project that will preserve the nation's digital outpourings for future generations.

Unlike printed material, where he says copies of "lost" works have a greater potential to be rediscovered, in the digital age when we hit delete it's gone for good.

"Future generations are not going to thank us if they refer to this part of our history as the digital dark ages," he says.

The explosion of digital information where every schoolchild is now a content creator has rocked the traditionally conservative and controlled approach to cataloguing material, bringing with it what Coe describes as "information anarchy".

He says libraries around the world are struggling to cope with a "tidal wave of content" and New Zealand has "high mana" internationally for finding solutions to this challenge.

A side-project is under way to build web-harvesting "robots" to help human archivists make decisions on what material to preserve, and there could be something in the national psyche that gets such ideas off the ground. "We're a little impatient with talk-fests," Coe says.

The digital archive will perform an annual web harvest of the .nz domain name and within a few years Coe expects it to be holding several terabytes of data.

To help gather and preserve this material he wants to build relationships with content creators, including media organisations and tertiary institutions. Legislative authority for the archive extends only to collecting and preserving material. And while assuring content creators their copyright will be respected, Coe would like to see material made publicly available at some time.

"The idea is that the digital version of the Herald will be accessible in a 1000 years time."


Who: Director of digital innovations services at the National Library.

Favourite gadget: i-mate mobile device. "During boring meetings I can play solitaire."

Next big thing: The rise of the digital generation releasing a "huge burst of creativity".

Alternative career: "Imagineer", working with private sector business to create opportunities.

Spare time: Watching the mind of his 1-year-old grandson develop.

Favourite sci-fi film: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series.