Ten years of Veridian Software: a platform created to present digital newspapers at scale, inspired by Greenstone—and yes, there’s an elephant story.

Of course we've been around for longer than 10 years, helping organisations around the world build their digital collections. The company was founded by our Director Stefan back in 2002.

We began by customizing Greenstone, the open source digital library software developed here in New Zealand. Stefan was one of the original designers and developers.

Soon we saw a real need in the market for a piece of presentation software to suit digital newspaper collections. We made it our mission to be the experts in presenting these large and often complex projects.

Two of our earliest customers were the National Libraries of New Zealand and Singapore (we still love working with both). To meet their requirements we used our knowledge and experience to create our very own newspaper presentation software.

But what would we call it?

After many lists, a long lunch and some beer for creative inspiration, we eventually settled on the name Veridian. It refers to a shade of green, and was chosen as a nod to the Greenstone product from which our digital library software originally sprouted.

And what's with the elephant?

Well we are in the business of digital preservation, so important historical content and newspapers can be easily discovered and never forgotten.

And a wise Greek once said "an elephant never forgets".