Founder of Pride NZ, Gareth Watkins, introduces the Pride NZ collection and describes its deposit with the National Library of New Zealand
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The abstract presents an overview of a recording titled "Introduction to Pride NZ," made by Pride NZ founder Gareth Watkins, in which Watkins discusses the creation, mission, and significance of the Pride NZ collection. Pride NZ, which started in 2009, is a Wellington-based community website that is privately funded and features over 900 audio recordings from New Zealand's LGBTI+ Rainbow communities. The collection includes personal stories and community events, capturing memories that span from contemporary times back to personal accounts from the 1940s and 1950s.
Watkins emphasizes the indispensable support received from the community, noting that the efforts of numerous individuals sharing their stories and event organizers permitting the use of their recordings have been critical to the project's success. The three objectives of Pride NZ are highlighted: celebrating the lives and stories of the Rainbow communities, enabling immediate access to content without embargoes, and acknowledging the need for a responsible strategy to preserve these important voices for posterity.
Acknowledging the limitations in terms of people, infrastructure, and finances needed to sustain an archive indefinitely, Watkins outlines Pride NZ's approach to ensure the collection's preservation. This includes depositing digital snapshots with the National Library of New Zealand in annual harvests since 2011 and with the Internet Archive starting around the same time. Pride NZ has also taken steps to enhance the archive by adding high-resolution audio files and computer-generated transcriptions to improve accessibility and discoverability.
In a pivotal event, the National Library of New Zealand acquired the Pride NZ collection in September 2022, which included an extensive array of master recordings and related materials. Watkins notes that accruals to the collection are ongoing, with new recordings regularly added. Furthermore, Pride NZ has released datasets under a Creative Commons license, enabling the public to access detailed metadata and geo-referenced information regarding Rainbow community locations.
The National Library of New Zealand, described by Watkins as having the most robust digital infrastructure for managing cultural collections, serves as the primary repository for the long-term safeguarding of the collection. It has dedicated resources to manage the files indefinitely and a professional team tasked with describing the collection at the item level, furthering discoverability. An important aspect of this partnership is the library’s dedication to maintaining the collection's ethos of open access, as was the original intent of Pride NZ and its contributors.
The library's efforts include utilizing specialized resources like the Homosaurus, an international thesaurus of terms related to Rainbow communities, to ensure respectful and accurate representation of the collection's content. Watkins expresses the importance of housing the archive in an institution that respects and gives voice to the diversity represented within the recordings.
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