NBR article - June 24 2009

NBR Staff | Wednesday June 24 2009 - 11:25am

Knowledge Basket, one of New Zealand's leading subscriber-based news and information database and archival services has launched its South Pacific database last week and over a dozen of its clients are already trialling the service.

"We feel enthused with the quick response to Knowledge Basket South Pacific,' director Dave Keet said.

Knowledge Basket has been operating since 1994 and is a partnership between consumers and suppliers of information.

It provides database services to universities, polytechnics, schools, large corporations, the New Zealand Parliament, several government departments and media researchers.

The Knowledge Basket's main databases provide a huge volume of information relating to legislation and legal matters as well as aggregated searches to several of New Zealand's leading publications including NBR.

The databases are carefully structured and maintained, updated daily - sometimes several times a day - and there are rules and tools for effective searching.

Publishers supply The Knowledge Basket with data in all sorts of formats and at varying frequencies. The company converts the data using automatic conversion programs that result in a uniform style of presentation so that clients can conduct searches across a wide range of sources and be sure of retrieving relevant and timely material.

Knowledge Basket South Pacific will have databases of news and information sources from the entire Pacific region including New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and - for the first time - from the Pacific islands.

Lindy Winterburn, Dave Keet, and Dev Nadkarni are directors in this venture.

Dave and Lindy are former librarians with decades of experience in library and information management as well as information technology. Dev is a journalist who writes on Pacific affairs.

On the web: http://www.knowledge-basket.com.fj/about/