The last major encyclopedia of New Zealand, A H McLintock's Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, was published in three volumes in 1966. It was a major hit with the country, over 31,000 copies were sold within three months. But when all 33,000 copies had gone the encyclopaedia was never reprinted.
Since 1966 there have been huge advances in both scholarship and technology. When thoughts turned to producing a new encyclopedia it was conceived as web-based rather than a hard copy book publication.
The Internet allowed the new encyclopedia to be interactive, searchable, updateable, multimedia and, incredibly, free to access from anywhere in the world .
Between 1 July 2002 and the launch of Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand on 8 February 2005, hundreds of thousands of hours of work went in to design, research, writing, editing, resourcing and all the technical aspects of getting such a comprehensive website up and running.
Te Ara is being produced in themes rather than the traditional A – Z encyclopedia presentation, allowing for the completion of comprehensive sections on related topics.
Nine themes have been identified for introduction over the next few years:
To fill in the picture as Te Ara grows, eight concise and up-to-date entries about major aspects of New Zealand life have been published under the heading New Zealand In Brief.
McLintock’s much-loved Encyclopaedia of New Zealand has been digitised and is presented in Te Ara as a ‘blast from the past’.
The name Te Ara means the pathway and the tagline ‘What’s the story?’ gives the encyclopedia its online identity and illustrates the informal Kiwi flavour used in providing explanations and narratives about New Zealand.
Te Ara is the world’s first national encyclopedia created specifically for the web, confirming this country’s reputation as the home of creative and cutting edge thinking. Since its launch in February we have had interest in the project from a number of other countries around the world.
An outstanding feature of Te Ara is the use of multi-media resources such as image trails of photos, documents and maps, as well as sound recordings and historic film footage. Publishing on the Internet makes Te Ara more vibrant and interactive than any hard-copy encyclopedia could ever be.
Te Ara is also a major language and culture resource for Māori, with a comprehensive collection of iwi histories, written largely by the iwi themselves, available in both te reo Māori and English. Iwi entries are supported by drawings, photos, waiata and whakapapa, some of which have never been shared with the general public before.
The launch of the Te Ara’s first theme, ‘New Zealanders’, was a multimedia event itself with the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Helen Clark pressing the button to bring Te Ara to life on the big screen in Te Papa’s Sounding Theatre in February 2005.
‘New Zealanders’ focuses on the people who make this country what it is today, from the first canoes through to early European settlement, on to the new arrivals of the 20th century, right up to today’s immigrants from all over the world
The launch reflected the flavour of this first theme, and involved live video conferencing links with six schools spread across New Zealand, with each school representing a group of settlers, during which the technology behaved impeccably.
Working on Te Ara has involved the support of thousands of New Zealanders, telling their stories, writing contributions, allowing us to use their photos and treasures.
Many of these resources are from archives and museums around the country, as well as from the newspaper collections of the New Zealand Herald and the Otago Daily Times and the film library of Television New Zealand. We are very grateful for the support we have received in bringing these resources to the website.
Work on developing Te Ara will be ongoing for many years to come and perhaps will never be complete as learning and technology changes. But in the shorter-term future, work is progressing on the next theme, ‘Earth, Sea and Sky’ which will cover both natural science and human interaction with the environment. Writers are working on subjects as varied as tectonic plates, the ecology of estuaries and New Zealand’s night sky.
On the technology side, we are working on ways to include interactives and animations to enrich Te Ara and to assist in communicating the sometimes quite complex content. Look out for living estuaries, pulsating earthquakes and a where-not-to-be of shark attacks in New Zealand.
Earth, Sea and Sky is on track to be launched by mid-2006.
Visit the wonderful world of Te Ara at www.TeAra.govt.nz.
Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand is a great example of the Ministry’s Outcome 2, widespread access to and understanding of New Zealand culture and heritage.
Te Ara wins a GOVIS ‘Buzzie’ award. At the May 2005 Government Information System Managers’ Forum conference, Te Ara was awarded a ‘Buzzie’ in the Technology and Society category. The Buzzies are peer recognition awards intended to celebrate individual, team and organisational success, and foster innovation and creativity.
Recently Te Ara was announced as the New Zealand finalist in the e-culture category of the World Summit Awards. This is a global contest for selecting and promoting the World’s best e-contents and applications. Putting its focus on cultural identity and diversity, the WSA looks for multimedia projects that effectively and creatively work with quality contents and digitalise educational, scientific and cultural heritage.
