A New Look for UC QuakeStudies
The UC Arts Digital Lab is excited to announce the launch of the new and improved UC QuakeStudies earthquake research repository.
UC QuakeStudies, the University of Canterbury’s major contribution to CEISMIC, contains nearly 150,000 photographs, documents, videos, audio recordings, media articles, and other material relating to the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes. Each item in the repository is accompanied by high-quality human-curated metadata such as descriptions, geolocations, and dates and times, offering rich datasets for researchers from a range of disciplines to draw on.
The project to update the QuakeStudies online platform was undertaken by the UC Arts Digital Lab in collaboration with local open source technologists Catalyst IT. The new QuakeStudies platform, built on the Islandora digital repository system, boasts enhanced searchability, improved document viewing tools, and a cleaner, more user-friendly layout offering greater navigability.
UC Arts Digital Lab Director, Professor Paul Millar, launches the new QuakeStudies
A launch event was held in the UC Arts City Location in the Arts Centre’s old Chemistry building last week, and was attended by representatives of the CEISMIC consortium from Christchurch City Council, Canterbury Museum and Christchurch City Libraries, contributors to the archive, and UC researchers keen to hear how the new QuakeStudies can assist them in their research.
PhD student Sionainn Byrnes talks about how she is using QuakeStudies material in her research
Six years on from the initial launch of UC QuakeStudies in 2012 the repository is still going strong, and it continues to grow and receive new content. This new upgrade ensures that the ongoing preservation of digital archival materials relating to the earthquakes will continue long into the future.