Keystrokes of our history to be stored in digital archives

The Gutenberg Bible, the first bible to be printed, has been put on the internet by the University of Texas.

Happy with that online fashion blog? Proud of those flirtations you made in the dating chat room?

Let's hope so. From later this year, it may become part of the nation's heritage, available for all New Zealanders to look at today and in the future.

This year the National Library will be collecting and storing material which exists only in digital form, something it has done with printed material for years.

Not everything will be freely available, but almost everything can be collected - including those embarrassing chat room conversations, especially if they were in a forum everyone could see on the web for free.

"There is potential to collect that kind of material once this scheme is up and running," said National Library collection services director Alison Elliott.

"But the library has said that in some areas we will have to be quite selective. Some digital material will be given more priority than others."

It's a process which happens to some degree already with printed material - National Library staff have to make decisions about which theatre and show programmes to put in the records, for example - but it doesn't mean less official material won't be given serious consideration. Ms Elliott said this type of information could be just as effective at telling future generations how we lived as newspapers can.

For years publishers have handed the National Library three copies (soon to become two) of every book, newspaper and journal published in the country, in an effort to preserve the country's heritage. However, in the last few years staff have realised that a lot of written material was produced only in digital form - most commonly on the internet.

Eventually it was realised that in order to help guard against what the National Library terms "digital memory loss", new legislation would be needed.

The draft legislation was put out for consultation last year and staff are working through issues which have arisen from public submissions. In the meantime, the Government has given the Library $24 million to create a digital repository.

"We will preserve this nation's digital heritage with as much care as we have protected, and will continue to protect, our existing print collections," Ms Elliott said.

Steve Knight, the national digital heritage archive programme architect, said this was not as easy as it sounded as such repositories were almost unheard of overseas.

"It's not as if we can just put this out for tender to two or three companies and choose the best. We effectively have to get a new system designed for us," he said.

"We have to be quite conservative when thinking how we set this up. We want to keep this material available in perpetuity and there are issues to consider with the way technology changes."

The biggest issue to emerge during consultation came from publishers worried about copyright. To solve this, the only digital material which the National Library can put online is material which was already available free to the public, unless the publisher agrees.

The library has also agreed not to make printed material such as books available online. Films, television and radio material will continue to head towards their own archives.

Also still at issue is how the library will receive the material, especially from publishers of more official websites and magazines.

"We are still in consultation about how they will provide the library, but in principle the publishers have been very supportive of the idea. They see the value of what we are doing," Ms Elliott said.

Much digital material, however, will be collated at the library itself. Ms Elliott was unsure how many staff would be needed, but she and Mr Knight expected the project to be time-consuming and need serious staffing.

A letter from Ms Elliott last month said it was hoped that electronic legal deposit would come into force in August, though this will depend to some extent on the progress of legislation once the library reports back after consultation.

- NZPA

Digital library

* The National Library is embarking on a scheme which will archive the country's digital history.
* Most material will come from the internet. Other digital material can be collected, such as CD-ROMs and DVDs.
* The four-year $24 million programme is expected to be completed by June 2008.