Search function added to UC CEISMIC digital archive

The UC CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquake Digital Archive, built by a consortium of national organisations to gather and preserve digital content related to the Canterbury earthquakes, has added a search function to its website.

Although not all consortium members will have content available immediately, UC CEISMIC search will eventually return results from across a federated archive comprising collections held by the University of Canterbury, Christchurch City Libraries, the Canterbury Museum, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, the National Library, New Zealand Film Archive, NZ on Screen, the Ngai Tahu Research Centre and Te Papa.

The UC CEISMIC Programme is led by College of Arts staff, for the benefit of the wider university and community.

The archive's Programme Director, Paul Millar, said that approximately 8,000 digital objects are currently accessible through UC CEISMIC search, and this is expected to at least double when the University of Canterbury's archive, UC QuakeStudies, goes live over the coming months.

"The numbers will continue to grow as organisations add to their quake-related collections, and as new content providers are added to the service. High value community collections are also included, to ensure a broad base of content becomes available

'"This is a great start, but it's only day one. Our aim is to ensure more quality content becomes available through ceismic.org.nz over the coming decades, and to ensure as much as possible of it is preserved for future generations," he said.

The service is powered by Digital NZ, a unit within the National Library, who will work with the UC CEISMIC Programme Office, based at the University of Canterbury, to add new content as it becomes available. People interested in contributing content should email ceismic@canterbury.ac.nz.