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Supporting the sovereignty of collections in Aotearoa New Zealand
21 Jul 2025, 5:36 PMRōpū kohinga at Catalyst share insights and considerations for managing data and ensuring data sovereignty to provide long-term care for collections.
Kohikohi ngā kākano, whakaritea te pārekereke, kia puāwai ngā hua
Gather the seeds, prepare the seedbed carefully, and you will be gifted with abundance. This whakataukī embodies the foundational care that is needed to sustain collections for the long-term. Whether you’re a small library, a museum, or another institution, how data is cared for has a direct impact on the accessibility of your collection. In this blog post, Rōpū kohinga share insights and considerations for managing and storing data.
Providing context with metadata
The value of a collection isn't only in the records or items, but is fully realised through the metadata. Metadata is data about data, zooming in to the smallest of details, such as:
- where it came from
- when it was last updated, and by who
- where it is stored
- what format it is stored in.
Strong metadata management is created by people who bring their knowledge and experience about the context of an artefact into their process. This care creates credible information, reliable resources, and builds accessibility for the communities that need to find them.
Metadata to reflect cultural frameworks
Metadata isn’t static and can be updated to reflect new standards or frameworks. We’re seeing libraries practising decolonising how collections are catalogued, and metadata is a way to provide more cultural context. The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) has a Reparative Description Community of Practice (RDCoP) group for discussing this topic. For example, your metadata may include subject headings based on Indigenous knowledge frameworks, such as Ngā Upoko Tukutuku.
Your metadata could also include the Indigenous language of the record. In Australia, the Education Services Australia SCIS has sponsored a plugin to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages for cataloguing records in Koha.
Protecting access to data
Where your data and metadata are hosted matters. From patron data to research, how your data is stored can contribute to security or access control risks, especially if you store Indigenous data or sensitive data about people.
If you’d like to learn more about considerations for where your data is stored and how it could be accessed, read our blog post written by Chris Cormack, Kaihuawaere Matihiko at Catalyst.
Pictured: Chris Cormack Kaihuawaere Matihiko at Catalyst and Aleisha Amohia Rōpū kohinga Technical Lead.
Pictured: Kathryn Tyree, Rōpū kohinga Services Team Lead.
Over the last year, we’ve seen more Māori organisations and higher education prioritise data sovereignty. Institutions like Auckland University of Technology have championed a values-led approach to their collections, including protecting the data they hold under New Zealand laws.
Kathryn Tyree, Rōpū kohinga Services Team Lead, shares, “data sovereignty is at the top of people’s list. It’s a non-negotiable. We’ve had organisations express the desire to repatriate the data back to Aotearoa.”
These organisations are prioritising data sovereignty to also ensure Māori have more control over their own data. Indigenous data sovereignty considers broader cultural considerations with how data is managed. You can learn more about Indigenous data sovereignty in our blog post.
Creating responsible stewardship and kaitiakitanga
Understanding where your data is makes it easier to plan how to protect your data. From here, your asset management system should make it easy for you to store metadata in a structure that makes sense for your data and the communities who will utilise it.
Pictured: Chris Cormack, and from Rōpū kohinga, Aleisha Amohia and Wainui Witika-Park at NDF 2025.
When metadata structures can be configured to align with cultural frameworks for managing data, it strengthens the collection by making it easier to manage and maintain, as well as enhancing the accessibility of your resources.
Open source library software uses open data standards, providing the means to create, share, and reuse frameworks for metadata. This year, we’ve seen post-settlement governance entities choose software like Koha to enable them to preserve information for generations to come and have it available in multiple languages.
Choosing sovereign hosting in Australia and New Zealand
At Catalyst, our hosting solutions prioritise data sovereignty so your collection and data remain in your control. If you’re based in Aotearoa New Zealand, Catalyst Cloud is a secure, scalable, and sovereign hosting option.
Meeting ISO-270001, ISO-20017, and PCI-DSS v4 standards, Catalyst Cloud provides resilience for the long term. As part of our hosting, we provide monitoring, maintenance and upgrades, back-ups, and ongoing support. If you’re in Australia, we can support you to achieve data sovereignty by hosting on 100% Australian-owned infrastructure.
If you’d like to self-host, we can always support you with the implementation to ensure high performance. Have questions? Contact Rōpū kohinga, we’re happy to help.
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