Of all the world’s cultural aggregators, DigitalNZ is the winner. Why? Because they got the human thing right (and the technology thing, too, but they got the human thing first). They realised that aggregation is a hearts and minds game before it is a digital game, and that securing buy-in depended on engaging with people directly and on their own terms.

And because of this engagement, they also got the Barrier to Entry thing - that any barrier, no matter how small, to participation is going to be a major inhibitor on the number of people that participate. To address this, they ensured that their aggregator provided multiple points of entry and upload formats, including everything from an Excel spreadsheet or an email to a full-specced SOAP interface. It was a genius move, and one which seems to have created a real community around their work.

Another interesting post from Nick Poole, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't - but well worth reading.

I certainly agree with the above (though I'd tend to play down the technical bit more than Nick does). What DigitalNZ did was to create an idea that people could very easily understand and buy into. The low barrier to entry thing (from a technical perspective) was a nice addition... but that came second. What mattered was having an easily understood agenda and rationale. Something that people could feel good about contributing to. Something that people could feel proud of. Something that people saw a value in. Something that played to people's cultural identity. Something that did what it said on the tin.

(I say all this as a distant spectator, of course).

What the current UK RDTF activity lacks, even in its re-branded 'Discovery' form (or perhaps... *especially* in its re-branded 'Discovery' form?) is such a "yeah, I get it" reaction. And the same is true of Europeana and, to an extent, of CultureGrid.

You see... I don't know if Jo Public in New Zealand has ever heard of DigitalNZ but what I'm pretty sure about is that if you stopped her in the street and said "have you heard of DigitalNZ?" it wouldn't take long, probably not much longer than just saying the name, before she had a pretty good idea what you were on about. Or, to put it another way, DigitalNZ got the 'brand' right in a way that not many other similar initiatives have done. Nothing to do with the technology... all about the 'big idea', mindset and buy-in.

The other problem, for those of us in the UK (and in Europe), is that you can't expect to build a shared cultural artifact (whether or not that artifact takes the form of an environment in which things can happen (RDTF) or a place on the Web (DigitalNZ)) when there is no shared sense of 'culture'. Am I English, British or European (c.f. the recent census question) and do I care? Without such a shared sense of culture, all one can really attempt to do is build a few search tools (aimed largely at 'visitors').

(Oh... and my answer to the above questions (FWIW) is that I tend to see myself mostly as English these days though, to be honest, I have little real cultural sense of what that means - on which basis, I guess I don't really care that much (except where sport is concerned (sometimes))).

(PS. Sorry... lots of brackets in that last paragraph - I must have been thinking in LISP).