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RESEARCH, INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO
GONE are the days when history was
only found in books and dusty old records.
Digital histories are becoming a more
common way to tell our stories. At the
University of Waikato, History Professor
Cathy Coleborne offers a level three
paper in digital histories using a variety
of digital tools including some developed
in the Department of Computer Science
at Waikato.
Greenstone is a suite of open
source software tools for building and
distributing digital library collections that
was developed at Waikato. It can be used
to create large, searchable collections of
digital documents. Through user selected
plugins, Greenstone can import digital
documents in formats including text, html,
jpg, tiff, MP3, PDF, video, and Word,
among others. The text, PDF, HTML
and similar documents are converted
into Greenstone Archive Format (GAF)
which is an XML equivalent format.
Professor Coleborne says history has
traditionally been taught as geographically
bound or time bound, but digital
histories offer new opportunities. “History is
about gathering, preserving and presenting,
and students need to know how to present
history in a digital format. And by going
digital you can also reach a wider audience,
to include social media sites and blogging,
and how history might be transmitted via
those tools.”
She doesn’t know of any other digital
history programme being offered in
New Zealand. “I think it’s important
for history students to know about
The enduring co-operative
History in
the 21st
century
different historical methodologies, or
ways of finding out about the past, and
this is another hands on way for students
to engage with materials from the past
and present.”
Associate
Professor
Sally
Jo
Cunningham and other staff from
computer science work with the history
students to become familiar with Greenstone
and its uses. It helps that Dr Cunningham
also has a background inhumanities and in
library and information science.
“My research and teaching focus
has shifted over the years to the user
side of computer science and I have
keenly followed the emerging field of
digital humanities.
“I can talk about the field of
digital libraries, how these digital collections
can be created by researchers or by
'regular folks', and how the Greenstone
DL software has been used to support
the creation of history collections
by users around the world. In
computer science we also offer a half-
THE GLOBAL importance of co-operative enterprise cannot be
underestimated. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has said co-
operatives are a reminder to the international community that it is
possible to pursue both economic viability and social responsibility.
The International Co-operative Alliance reports that globally, co-
operatives provide employment for more than 100 million people.
While co-operatives are found in a wide range of industry sectors,
they are most common in financial services, agriculture, retailing
and wholesaling.
ProfessorDelwynClark at theUniversity of WaikatoManagement
School has been working on a major international research
programme featuring 40 co-operative enterprises in 16 countries.
Along with co-editors from Australia and France, she has published
a new research handbook on co-operatives called Sustainable Co-
operative Enterprise: Case Studies of Organisational Resilience in the
Co-operative Business Model.
“You can go back to the Middle Ages and find evidence of
cheese-making and weaving co-operatives,” she says. “But what our
international study focussed on was finding out how co-operatives
operate in a global market while staying true to co-operative principles
and how they innovate for success. Even though they’re an important
part of the global economy, the business model of co-operatives hasn’t
been previously examined in this way.”
Professor Clark’s own research took her to one of New Zealand’s
largest and leading agricultural co-operatives LIC (Livestock
Improvement Corporation) where she investigated how LIC provides
value to shareholders by increasing productivity and production
capability of dairy farms.
“LIC provided me with good evidence that you can stick with
co-operative values and principles and still be a successful innovative
business. Every decision they make gets linked to their purpose.”
Professor Clark looked at the core components of a co-
operative business model: purpose, profit formula, key
resources, key processes, governance and share structure.
“LIC has more than 10,000 members, including 95% of the
country’s dairy farmers, and does business in 15 countries.
They have had a ‘staircase’ of innovations over time in herd testing
and artificial breeding and are world leaders in these areas,” she says.
To continue to innovate, LIC spends 25% of its income on
research and development. “It’s a co-operative that is future-focussed,
leading-edge and has a share structure that enables members to
achieve gains as well.” Professor Clark says LIC is a co-operative that
demonstrates how to create economic value for members, as well as
contributing significantly to their industry and the national economy.
TAKEOUTS
University of Waikato PhD student Ben
Jackson is researching the manufacturing and
advancement of titanium metal composites.
Based at Tauranga’s Titanium Industry
Development Association (TiDA), Ben is the
first mechanical engineering doctoral student
to study in the Bay of Plenty.
He is researching whether he can create
a new titanium composite material using
selective laser melting (SLM) that will be
stronger, lighter and more resistant to very
high temperatures than titanium alone. Many
titanium ceramics are already used in surface
treatments on machined parts, however
creating them through the SLM manufacturing
process is a relatively new concept.
If successful, it will allow far more complex
parts to be designed and will open up a much
wider range of potential markets.
First year Waikato University music student
Paul Newton-Jackson has been awarded the
Girdlers’ Scholarship to study at Cambridge
University’s Corpus Christi College. The
Girdlers’ Scholarship is valued at £25,000 a
year and is funded by the Girdlers’ Company
in the United Kingdom, a craftsman’s guild
founded in medieval times.
In 1952 the company decided to grant an
award to a young outstanding New Zealander
every three years, with the award becoming
an annual one since 1969. Paul is the 50th
New Zealander to receive the scholarship. He
plays the piano, pipe organ, electric guitar,
bass guitar and percussion, but his first love is
composition – an interest which began when
he attended a young musicians’ mentorship
initiative at the University of Waikato.
He says the music course offered at
Cambridge, which includes weekly composers’
workshops, will be intensive yet rewarding.
Paul, who is a Hillary Scholar at Waikato
will head to Cambridge in October. The
Girdlers’ Scholarship is administered in
New Zealand by Universities New Zealand –
Te Pōkai Tara.
University of Waikato Pro Vice-Chancellor
Māori Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith has been
made a fellow of the American Educational
Research Association (AERA). Her husband
Professor Graham Hingangaroa Smith, CEO
of Waikato University's partner institution, Te
Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi in Whakatane
has also been named a 2014 fellow.
Professor Linda Smith (Ngāti Awa and
Ngāti Porou) is Professor of Education and
Māori Development and Dean of the School of
Māori & Pacific Development at the University
of Waikato.
In 2013 she was awarded a Companion
of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her
services to Māori and education.
The AERA award acknowledges notable
and sustained research achievements. The
Smiths are the only New Zealanders from 22
academics to be made fellows in 2014.
Looking for breakthroughs with titanium
Composition at Cambridge
International award for Māori researchers
OLD STORIES, NEWTECHNOLOGY: University of Waikato's Professor Cathy
Coleborne is teaching new ways to tell our stories.
semester module on Greenstone that
we encourage the history students to take.
“It's a good opportunity to develop
hands-on skills in digital collection
management, among the other skills
that will be useful for them in future
study and in future employment,” Dr
Cunningham says.
Not all students come willingly to the
digital format. “Our job is to get them past
that resistance, because there’s so much
more that can be accomplished in history
research if the researcher has just a bit of
IT background.”
Dr Cunningham and Professor
Coleborne are looking for more
opportunities to collaborate in the
computer science-history domain. Currently
on study leave, Dr Cunningham is visiting
colleagues at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign to learn from the
courses that they teach for Library and
Information Science students.
LIC TREASURE: 'Howie's Checkpoint', contributing to the
co-operative's success.
