Posts from — September 2007
Te Kete Horowhenua
It doesn’t take million dollar budgets and large teams of techies to create really good websites. Te Kete Horowhenua is a simple looking website but one with an enormous amount of quality content and bold ambitions.
The website is a community built digital library of arts, cultural and heritage resources for and about Horowhenua. One of the main aims is “to get privately owned papers and photographs out from under beds and sitting alongside public archive and photograph collections.”
They’re doing pretty well. When I looked there were: 1,285 articles about historic figures, events, services, and much more; 11,371 images; 94 downloadable audio clips of family life, preparations for war and other oral history; plus documents, links and discussion.
The other part of the vision is to:
capture the memories and stories that are our heritage, we want a place where our artists can showcase their work, and where our businesses and attractions can promote themselves, where we can celebrate who we are and how we live.
The website is pretty inspirational.
The underlying software application or code is freely available for other groups to use, through a GNU General Public License (GPL). This means that anyone with the technical savvy can use the same software tool to set up something similar in their district, neighbourhood, or nation.
It is probably for that reason this reason that te kete was nominated in July for the 2007 World Summit Award. The Award is a global initiative to select and promote the world’s best e-Content, started in 2003 in the framework of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
Starting in our backyard, and spreading around the world. That’s what the Internet’s all about I guess.
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September 5, 2007 No Comments
