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The Canadian Jewish Heritage Network (www.cjhn.ca) contains over one hundred thousands archival and genealogical records about Jewish history in Canada. The website is now powered by the latest version of the Andornot Discovery Interface (AnDI), providing an updated search with facets, spell checking and a host of new features.  

The CJHN site is hosted by Andornot and first launched in 2011, using the Umbraco content management system for static content and Inmagic WebPublisher PRO for database searching. Two separate databases were maintained: one for archival records and the other for genealogical. The records are contributed by a number of Jewish archives across the country, from many different source systems, including DB/TextWorks, FileMaker, and Archilog.

About a year later, a mobile-friendly view of the site and search features was added, along with an early version of our Andornot Discovery Interface (AnDI), to provide a simple search across the two separate databases.  This was an improvement, but meant that users had to contend with two different search syntaxes and separate selection carts.  After several months of planning and development, the early version of AnDI was recently upgraded. AnDI is now the only search engine on the site, searching all archival and genealogical records. 

Records are available from six different repositories and include many digitized photographs and historic documents, and an increasing number of videos. Search options allow users to easily narrow their results to just these types of records if they wish. An advanced search page also allows users to limit their searches by repository, material type, and other parameters, or to Browse A-Z indexes of Names, Places, Subjects and Collections. The Image Galleries and fonds inventories have all been upgraded to use the new search system.

The updated selection feature allows users to save records and then create a PDF, email them to a colleague, or request more information from the archives.  A hierarchical display shows the archival records in context and there is a link to view related records based on indexing terms. Permalinks facilitate the indexing of individual records by Google and other search engines, thus providing additional access points to the collection.  

We are delighted to have been able to continue to work with CJHN on improvements to their site and to see the network continue to flourish. As AnDI is a search layer, minimal changes were required to staff workflow in each of the repositories.   

Janice Rosen (CJHN coordinator and director of the Canadian Jewish Congress CC National Archives) notes: "The more I explore the potential of our new interface, the more I marvel at what it can do. Being able to search for very specific areas of interest has benefited our staff as well as our clientele, and the site partners can now create display galleries with minimal effort."

If you have an existing system that works well behind the scenes, but doesn’t have all the features that users expect in a modern search engine, contact us to see how AnDI could provide an enhanced interface to your collections.

Earlier Blog Posts About CJHN

Canadian Jewish Heritage Network Launches

Canadian Jewish Heritage Network Launches Enhanced Search and Mobile Interface

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has updated its library catalogue with the Andornot Discovery Interface (AnDI).

As with another recent AnDI project for the Canadian Conservation Institute, the CRTC library needed to ensure its library catalogue interface met current standards for web accessibility, as well as incorporating the Government of Canada’s common look and feel for websites, and offering an interface in both official languages. The library catalogue had been available online for some time, but not in a format that met accessibility requirements. Without a change, the catalogue would have to be removed from the internet.

The Andornot Discovery Interface was the perfect choice for meeting these requirements with a new search interface.  It offers:

  • Fast, relevancy-based keyword search results;
  • spelling corrections and did-you-mean suggestions of alternate terms;
  • faceted browsing to easily narrow down results;
  • hit-highlighting showing search words in context;
  • full-text indexing and searching; and
  • tools for saving and sharing records.

The CRTC library continues to use DB/TextWorks to manage the collection. Data is automatically exported with the Andornot Data Extraction Utility for indexing in AnDI.

You can try out the new catalogue at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/Library/

Contact us to see how we can upgrade your search interface to meet current standards for usability and accessibility.

 

PTMAQuickSearchPageProvincial and territorial medical associations (PTMA) in Canada set policies on various issues such as emergency room overcrowding, nurse practitioners, electronic medical record keeping, prescription drug usage, etc. for their particular jurisdiction. The Health Policy and Research (HP&R) department of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) was asked to create a repository of these policy documents and make them available to all PTMAs. The library was already managing a database of CMA policies and was asked by HP&R to set up a similar database for the PTMAs.

Andornot worked with the CMA library team, led by Reference Librarian Elizabeth Czanyo, and the association’s IT department, to set up a password protected database using the Andornot Starter Kit (ASK), DB/TextWorks and WebPublisher PRO, with the following features:

    • Full text document searching and display
    • Link to PDF document
    • Referring URL security
    • Email, Save and Print cart
    • Permalinks to each policy
    • Search, display and cart all in same template
    • Bilingual: English and French
    • Search result sorting by Title, Date and PTMA Author

Now researchers at each PTMA can access and compare policies from various jurisdictions, assisting them in the creation of their own policies.

Elizabeth Czanyo says, “I think the database will be a useful tool for our provincial partners, and help them collaborate in policy creation across the country. Working with Denise Bonin and her team at Andornot was great – they were fast, professional and really knew their stuff!”

Andornot has been championing discovery interfaces as the next generation of search interface for online collections for the past few years. We firmly believe they provide the best means for connecting users with the ever-growing amount of resources available online. While they have been widely adopted by public and academic libraries, and many other online content providers, they are not yet often used as the search interface for more specialized collections.

We’re pleased to announce the availability of a solution specifically designed for these situations: AnDI, the Andornot Discovery Interface.

AnDI-featuresAnDI is a web application based on both the Apache Solr search engine and our own extensive experience in developing search interfaces.

It provides the features users expect in a search interface in 2012, including:

  • relevancy-based search results;
  • automatic search term stemming and spelling corrections; and
  • facets to allow refinement of those results.

The intention is to deliver the most useful resources to the user in their initial search, but allow them to quickly narrow down the results further.

Great for Libraries, Archives, Museums and Other Collections

While other discovery interface systems, such as VuFind, are ideal for bibliographic data, AnDI works well with all descriptive formats. AnDI’s search index is based on the Dublin Core metadata standard, to accommodate materials described in many different ways. This includes archival descriptions, museum artifact records, bibliographic records, and more. By mapping fields from different data sources into the Dublin Core schema, almost anything can be made discoverable through AnDI.

AnDI includes permalinks and social bookmarking features to help users act on the results they find. Additional features are available to customize AnDI for specific projects (details are in our AnDI data sheet).

AnDI is a great choice for all organizations wishing to update their online collections to a system that meets their users’ expectations for a search experience.

Data Sources

AnDI can utilize a variety of data sources. This allows clients to retain their familiar legacy systems such as Inmagic DB/TextWorks, MS Access, Excel or other proprietary software for all data entry and other administrative tasks, and yet provide their end users with a sophisticated front end web interface. AnDI can also be tied into SQL Server for a completely web based application for both data entry and searching.

Example Sites

More Information

Further technical details and a data sheet with features and system requirement is available here.

Please contact us to discuss how to upgrade your search interface to AnDI, VuFind or a similar solution.

In June 2011, Andornot helped launch a new website and database for the Canadian Jewish Heritage Network. This site uses the Umbraco CMS to provide information on Canadian Jewish history, and includes two databases of archival and genealogical information, powered by Inmagic WebPublisher PRO and DB/TextWorks.

This June we’ve helped upgrade the site with two new features: an enhanced, multi-database search, and a mobile interface.

Enhanced, Multi-Database Search

The enhanced search is available on the Explore page and uses the Apache Solr search engine to index and search the two separate Inmagic databases (which remain available on the site). Results from both databases are integrated and sorted by relevance, using the sophisticated algorithms in Solr to present the best matches to the user. This feature is particularly useful to genealogical researchers as a “Did you mean” capability can alert them to misspellings or name variations. For example:

CJHN OneSearch

Mobile Interface

IMG_0467To access the mobile interface, simply open www.cjhn.ca in your mobile browser. You’ll be automatically redirected to the mobile view, with all the same content as the full site, but formatted to fit the smaller view of a mobile device.

The mobile view was created by extending the Umbraco CMS with additional templates and stylesheets. This allows CJHN to write content once, but display it in the format most suitable to the viewer.

Contact Andornot to upgrade your own web application to feature a mobile view or enhanced search options.

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