10 Years Of NZ Politics & Business Online And Open To The Public For A Limited Time
PRESS RELEASE
Scoop Media Limited
Scoop.co.nz
It is with pleasure that Scoop Media has been able to present the Scoop Library to the public in advance of this weekend's general election.
"The Scoop Library launch this week opens up to the public a remarkably powerful search resource containing the speeches
and press releases of all political parties, Parliamentary and outside Parliament, dating back nearly a decade,"
Alastair Thompson Scoop General Manager says.
"If you want to find out what the candidates really said then this is the place to look. The public can research the
claims made by politicians about each other directly. Politicians can look for inconsistencies to take swipes at each
other and the media can use it to settle their arguments.
"The interface that we have opened to the public this week enables searches to be conducted within specific time periods
and so fully drill down into what has been put into the public record over a full decade of NZ political debate."
The Scoop Library can be found at search.scoop.co.nz . Scoop's brand new, state- of-the-art integrated searchable content database contains almost 300,000 distinct news
items incorporating 10s of thousands of images and hundreds of press conference audio files.
"We are delighted to have been able to get this resource opened to the public in advance of the election this Saturday",
Thompson says.
"At present access to a research tool of this speed, clarity, coverage and capacity is limited strictly to paying
customers," Thompson says.
"But for the election and the government formation period ahead the tool will be available to the public for free as we
test it properly and solicit feedback."
The Scoop Library is the most comprehensive database of political and business news available in the NZ Market.
Providing free public access to news out of Parliament has been at the core of Scoop's mission since it launched in June
1999.
Now coming into its 4th election Scoop's Scoop Media Network - which includes Russell Brown's Public Address and David
Farrar's Kiwiblog - is NZ's leading independent online news network serving 2 million pages to half a million browsers a
month.
"By providing public access to the interplay of information at the core of the political system we have sought to
empower New Zealand's democracy", Thompson says. "The Scoop library is our latest way to express this mission. "
The Scoop Library has been a collaborative project led by developer Andrew Caudwell of Catalyst IT; Wellington open
source business solution specialists.
The faceted search interface - which allows you to search within categories and then discard results which you do not
want - is called "Abelard" and was developed by Catalyst IT programmers Martyn Smith and Nigel McNie. "Abelard" is the
name of an X-workstation in the office.
Scoop team members Billy Naylor, Finlay Thompson and Andrew Thompson have also contributed to the project over the past
12 months.
The Solr/Lucene driven database significantly enhances Scoops capacity to use, index and present content in more
sophisticated ways to a wider variety of targeted audiences..
The Scoop Library functions in real-time and adds value to traditional media monitoring systems.
Scoop Library is the first in a number of technical developments due for release over the coming year aimed towards
augmenting the Scoop product suite.
Released live here: search.scoop.co.nz on Scoop on Halloween Friday, The Scoop Library will be available in its full format ‘free’ to our audience for a
limited time.
We invite our readers to test the functionality and durability of the database and provide us with feedback on the
interface and desirable features via library@scoop.co.nz.
Media Please Contact: Alastair Thompson, Scoop General Manager 021 707044, alastair@scoop.co.nz