Andy Fenton is a Founder and the Chairman of New Zealand Micrographic Services (NZMS) and Recollect. Since co-founding NZMS in 1990 and its sister company Desktop Imaging Ltd in 1997, Andy has become a leading expert in cultural heritage digitisation projects, overseeing more of these projects than any other New Zealander. His expertise in digitisation services for the collections of “memory institutions” is highly valued in the GLAMIR sector both nationally and internationally.
Having worked first-hand across a number of organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past 25+ years, and being an active contributor on social media, Andy places great value in being able to represent the views of the wider community, government, commercial user sectors, and iwi. His extensive national and international networks provide him with unique insights into historical and current programs and projects. Renowned for his impartiality, Andy’s opinion and expertise are widely sought after.
A strong advocate for libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage institutions, Andy was elected to the inaugural National Digital Forum Board and serving 4 terms (2006-2013), and the ARANZ Council (2005-2010). He has also been active in Standards since 1996 and is a member of two Committees; Standards NZ’s International Review Group (2006-present) as well as a technical specialist in digitisation and micrographics for Standards Australia’s Joint Committee IT-021, Records and Document Management Systems (2021-present). In recent years, he has been proactive in disseminating information in these fields and is a vocal advocate for preserving historical newspapers through digitisation and microfilm.