James Taylor

James Taylor is the Online Collections Information & Partnerships Manager at Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, where he manages the Museum’s Collections Online, open data partnerships and other online projects.

James Taylor is speaking at the Digital Collections Summit :

Local histories with digital collections: two approaches

Aotearoa New Zealand has a new compulsory history curriculum for year 1-10 school children which offers a significant opportunity for GLAM institutions to expand their education audiences.

Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum is responding to this opportunity, which has a focus on understanding historical concepts and developments within local contexts, with two digital collection-based projects that provide local history resources for use in the classroom based on research undertaken to understand the needs of secondary school teachers across New Zealand. The first project features curated deep dives into collection items using video, text, and imagery, and features Museum staff and knowledge holders connected to the objects.

The second project enhances Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland suburb Wikipedia pages, creating reliable historical resources teachers can use as starting points for teaching local history. Both projects, one on the Museum’s website and the other on an external platform, provide useful online learning resources for schools at scale and offer new ways for audiences to engage with digital collections.