The Vancouver Public Library's Special Collections Division manages a variety of local history collections. Several of these are now searchable through an instance of our Andornot Discovery Interface, at https://localhistory.vpl.ca
The searchable collections include historic photographs, a registry of Vancouver buildings, and an index of newspaper articles related to the history of British Columbia, totalling almost 70,000 records. More information about these collections is provided on the home page of the new site.
Researchers may search by keywords, relying on the advanced algorithms of the search engine to find relevant materials, or start a search by browsing indexes of names, places and topics to view specific items of interest.
All search results may be refined by facets such as material type, date, names of people and places, and more. The 40,000 photographs may all be viewed immediately online, and historic buildings have links to maps and current street views of their locations.
The Delta Museum and Archives, in British Columbia, is a long time user of Inmagic DB/TextWorks software. Their collections were searchable online for many years, but due to technological change, became unavailable for a time. Now, however, thanks to a re-launch of the collections using our Andornot Discovery Interface, they are available once again, at https://archivesmuseum.delta.ca
The collection highlights the development of Delta with its large agricultural and fishing history. Almost 40,000 records are available, including over 12,000 photographs of people, places and historical artifacts, and over 200 oral history recordings.
As with all sites build from our Andornot Discovery Interface, users may browse indexes of names, places and subjects, as well as search by keywords, then refine and sort their search results to arrive at ones of interest. Results may viewed in a list, a table and a gallery of images, and interesting ones added to a selection list for further action or to request more information from staff.
The DB/TextWorks software, databases and the Andornot Discovery Interface site are all hosted by Andornot in our Canadian data centre.
The King Institute at Stanford University provides search access to an archival database of tens of thousands of speeches, sermons, letters, and other documents by and about Martin Luther King, Jr. Known as OKRA (Online King Records Access), the database includes descriptive information as well as holdings details for these resources held at repositories all over the United States.
A search engine for this collection was developed from our Andornot Discovery Interface in 2017, and in 2023, this was upgraded to the latest version of this software. A wealth of new features were brought to the site, as described in this blog post, aiding researchers in locating items of interest.
The site is available at https://okra.stanford.edu/
The Glengarry County Archives has added a further 6 titles to its collection of digitized newspapers. The full text of all issues is searchable at https://newspapers.glengarrycountyarchives.ca and dates back to the 1880s.
This site is powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface, a great choice for searching all forms of cultural collections and heritage content. It’s particularly useful for searching for the names of people where the spelling may vary or not be known with certainty and where names can appear in different orders (e.g. last comma first, first initial and last name only, wife’s first name and husband’s last name, etc.).
Issues matching a search may be viewed in the built-in viewer with search words highlighted, to direct a user to the best page in the issue quickly.
Learn more about this project, and contact Andornot to discuss digitization of your newspaper and development of a search engine for them.
The Paul D. Fleck Library and Archives at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity was established in 1990 to serve as the institutional memory of Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. With records from the Centre’s inception in 1933, the Archives serves as the official repository for administrative, legal, and historical materials, and additionally houses selected personal records of artists and individuals associated with Banff Centre.
For the past several years, this collection has not been accessible online, only by consultation with the Archives. However, in working with Andornot this year, the collection is now searchable through an instance of our Andornot Discovery Interface, at https://archives.banffcentre.ca. Initially, about 10,000 records are publicly available, but many tens of thousands more will become so, after some clean-up and ensuring appropriate permissions are in place. The initial 10,000 records include almost 3,000 photographs, as well as 200 documents, the text of which is fully searchable. These documents include annual reports, posters and concert programs, amongst other materials.
In addition to building the https://archives.banffcentre.ca site from our Andornot Discovery Interface, we merged data from several existing databases into new Accessions and Descriptions databases from our Andornot Starter Kit, which comply with the Canadian Rules for Archival Description (RAD), and cleaned up substantial fields and records in both, for best presentation and searching in https://archives.banffcentre.ca.
All software and data is hosted by Andornot for a seamless experience by Archives staff.
