Technical Options

There are a variety of different ways you can contribute your metadata to DigitalNZ.

XML Sitemap

An XML Sitemap is a file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site). An XML Sitemap is quite different from the commonly known ‘sitemap’ that is for a list of pages of a website. We can set our harvester to check out your XML sitemap and pick up any new content that appears. Here is an example of what an XML site map looks like on the DigitalNZ website.

OAI-PMH

Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting is the most efficient harvest method because it can be scheduled to run regularly and automatically to pick up only new or modified records. OAI-PMH is aimed at institutional repositories containing digital content. You can learn more about OAI-PMH at www.openarchives.org. 

API

An Application Programming Interface puts data into a format that can be easily connected to or built upon. APIs often return a set of results in XML or JSON format which can be consumed by our harvester. Here is an example of an API that we use to harvest from the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

HTML Scraping

If your records are accessible on a website but your metadata is not available through an API or sitemap our harvester may be able to scrape your metadata directly from your website. We can usually crawl your site automatically so that you don't need to be directly involved in harvesting. However, depending on your site structure, we may need you to send us a list of links or an xml file of your content. We only use this method if your site isn't updated regularly, because you will have to let us know when your site changes.

RSS Feed

We can use RSS feeds for quick daily harvests of your metadata. The RSS feed needs to point to the stuff that you want us to be harvesting. Here is an example of a feed we use to harvest from Quakestories

Hosting options

If your content doesn't have a home then you could look into our shared repository. Contact us to discuss if it's suitable for your situation.

Partnering with others

You might be interested in partnering with one of the collaborative initiatives we work with to harvest content. For example, NZ Museums.