On Wednesday night I attended the launch of the redeveloped NZMuseums website.

The site is run by the National Services Te Paerangi team at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Their vision for the new website is that it will be a global showcase for the collections and activities of New Zealand museums and galleries. It’s a great opportunity to profile museums and galleries and to display their collections to the rest of the world. The new site will also act as a museum directory, an online collection management system and a place for learning and discussion about museum issues and events.

Dr Seddon Bennington, Te Papa‘s Chief Executive, has commented that, “All museums can take part, but this new website particularly enables smaller museums that do not have a web presence to show their wonderful collections to the world. The site will also draw visitors to museums that they might otherwise not have known about”.

NZMuseums is not only a chance for museums to showcase their collections, but also to tell stories about their objects and taonga. For New Zealanders and tourists, it’s a great way to see what’s on offer before they visit or to have a virtual experience of a gallery or museum that they may never get the chance to see in person. Until now there’s only been one way to visit the Taranaki Transport Museum – and that’s by car – because it’s out of town. Now anyone can check it out online – any time, any where.

The website is a good example of collaboration. National Services Te Paerangi has worked closely with the museum sector to develop a valuable resource for the benefit of all. The team sent a photographer around New Zealand to teach museum staff how to photograph their collections to go on the web.

So far 50 museums and galleries have added their collections to the site and over 400 organisations are profiled there. More than 90% of the content that’s currently on the site wasn’t available on the web before. That, in itself, is a great achievement.

National Services will also be adding content to the site in their Blog, News, and What‘s On sections. In the next phase, NZLive.com will provide the events for the What’s On section and any galleries or museums that have their events listed on NZLive.com will have those events automatically displayed on their NZMusuems profile page.

NZMuseums is just one of many initiatives driven by National Services Te Paerangi, a team that provides practical and strategic help throughout New Zealand. Their goal is for museums and iwi to have increased public participation in their programmes, and for them to be significantly strengthened by working collaboratively at a local and national level.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Culture online, Events, New in the sector, Technology, Building audiences, National identity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.