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As Archives and Museums have had to close due to COVID 19 or are operating with reduced hours and access, it has become more important than ever to maintain visibility and value by providing more resources and information online.

There are still some grants available to help with the cost, and reassuringly the LAC DHCP program funding for 2020-21 has gone through and we are working with recipients on their projects.  There is also a new initiative, the Canada Emergency Support Fund for Heritage Organizations from Heritage Canada which has a submission deadline of  September 1, 2020.   The BC Museums Association and similar organizations in other provinces, provide listings of grants that are available.  We can provide assistance with writing proposals to take advantage of these funding opportunities and always have suggestions for projects that might fit into a grant application, or be feasible if you have any budget available.

Many of the grants are for digitization initiatives as these are one of the best ways of ensuring better access to items in your collections.  As part of the digitization program there is often the option to enhance your web search interface, which is where we can help.  We can work with all sorts of data without necessarily changing your underlying workflow and have you up and running with a modern, very functional site very quickly.  For clients who already have at least part of their collections online using our systems, we are suggesting some relatively simple enhancements such as adding commenting to digitized photos to allow more community involvement.  Take a look at a typical record with comment from Bulkley Valley Museum or from La Société historique de Saint-Boniface.  All comments are moderated before they are displayed which does take some work, but it is also a good opportunity to connect directly with your users.

Another option that is popular with people stuck at home and looking for something useful and interesting to occupy them, is crowdsourcing the transcription of various historical documents. We recommend these be based around a theme such as World War I diaries, or letters from a particular fond or on a selected topic. We can set up a site  using From the Page software (https://fromthepage.com/) where clients can upload handwritten digital documents for transcribing.  Apparently there is a surge in interest in this type of project - see this recent article How to Help Librarians and Archivists From Your Living Room. If you’re cooped-up and curious, use your free time to decipher handwriting, tag images, and more.

If you already have digitized content which is not yet available online, we have various options that might not be as costly or as time consuming as you might think!   We can extract metadata from a file structure or we can index the full text of documents to provide search capabilities immediately.  Maybe items have already been digitized by someone else?  Have you looked in the Internet Archive for items relevant to your collection?  Many of these are available for non commercial use and can be incorporated into your own systems quickly and easily.  Or do you have data in other repositories or software that we can integrate to add value?

Please let us know if you might be interested in learning more, or have any other good ideas that we can help you with!

The Manitoba Law Library has launched a new online catalogue featuring not only their print and electronic library resources, but a collection of over 17,500 judgments from Manitoba courts spanning 1970 to 1998. 

The new site is available at https://catalog.lawlibrary.ca and is powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface on top of Inmagic DB/TextWorks databases.

While Manitoba judgments made since 1998 are already available digitally in CANLII, the historic judgments in this collection were not previously available online or in any electronic form. Law Library staff scanned print copies of these judgments, then turned to Andornot to create a search engine for the collection.

"The Great Library has long been known to have this "secret" database of unreported judgments. Our goal was to make this collection available to everyone who wanted it, and to be able to retrieve it themselves."

-- Karen Sawatzky, Director of Legal Resources, Manitoba Law Library Inc.

Andornot created a DB/TextWorks database of judgment records out of a combination of a spreadsheet of metadata, listings of the scanned judgment PDF files on disk, and custom programming to extract additional metadata, such as Court Name, from acronyms in an Accession Number.

As the scanned print copies had not yet been OCRd to convert the images to text, we ran a process to do so for all 17,500 files. This allows the full text of the judgment to be indexed and made searchable in the new site.

This Judgments database, along with a library catalogue database also now managed with DB/TextWorks, is indexed in the https://catalog.lawlibrary.ca site.

This new site offers users the features they expect from library catalogues and all search engines: spelling corrections, "did you mean" search suggestions, relevancy ranked results powered by sophisticated algorithms, and facets such as subject, name, date and type of material to quickly and easily refine a search. When searching the historic judgments, users can also refine their search by Court.

If any search words were found in the full text of a judgment, a snippet of the relevant passage showing the words in context is display in search results. The user may then click a single button to open the judgment in their browser, showing the original scanned document, but with their search words pre-highlighted, where ever they may appear in the document. This feature saves the user from having to download, open and search all over again within the PDF for the relevant passage.

"We wanted to make it easier for our users to find material, whether it is an e-book, a print book, or a report, as well as upgrade the look and feel of our catalog. This system also allows us to create useful reports that help us demonstrate the value of our collection."

-- Karen Sawatzky

Contact Andornot for information management and search solutions for your legal or unique collections.

As the air gets crisper and precipitation drives us indoors, Fall is a great time to reflect and to find energy for new projects and adventures.

Have you thought about the web presence your museum, archive or library collection has? Are you providing users with modern tools to help them research your records and share them with others. Here are 10 ideas to read on a blustery Fall day, and that could add some sparkle to your website and online collections.

  1. Upgrade to a more modern search engine, such as our Andornot Discovery Interface, with features users expect when searching. For example, see how we helped Forestry Innovation Investment with their ThinkWood Research Library.
  2. Add ever more historic content to attract users interested in local history and genealogy, like the Arnprior & McNab/Braeside Archives did with back issues of the Arnprior Chronicle newspaper.
  3. Add a map interface so users can browse geographically, like the one we built for the Ontario Jewish Archives.
  4. Have lots of documents? Why not index the full text of them, then when a user searches for keywords, take them directly to the most relevant page in the PDF. No more downloading and repeating the search within the PDF to find the right page. Learn more.
  5. Get out in front of Community Engagement by adding the Disqus commenting system to your search results, so users can more easily discuss items in your collection, help identify people and places, and provide feedback to you.
  6. Make sure your website or search engine is mobile friendly. Google and other search engines now place mobile-friendly results higher in their rankings. And make sure you have a sitemap and permalinks so your collection can be easily indexed by Google and Bing.
  7. Planning to digitize large works, such as maps, paintings, or architectural drawings? Will users be able to see the fine detail in the resulting images on your website or in your search engine? Our Image Zoomer can help, by allowing users to easily zoom in on specific areas of a large image, without having to download that very large file.
  8. Is your website looking dated? Maybe it has the digital equivalent of large shoulder pads or flared pants? Time for a refresh? Let us help with a Content Management System and new graphic design, like we did recently for PRCVI (the BC Provincial Resource Centre for the Visually Impaired).
  9. Can't attract the attention of your own IT staff to help with your website or software? Why not have Andornot host it?
  10. On a tight budget? Consider our low-cost Digital History Hub platform for putting collections online and making virtual exhibits.

Contact us to discuss any of these ideas, and ones of your own.

The Museum of Health Care based in Kingston, Ontario is home to more than 35,000 artifacts, from surgical tools to laboratory instruments, which bring to life the story of medical care from the 18th century to the present day. The Museum has used the Inmagic DB/TextWorks software for many years to catalog and manage the collection, but was using a very old version and the web search interface was rudimentary and did nothing to showcase the artifacts.

The Museum received grant funding and Andornot was hired to provide updates that both met their administrative needs, and improved accessibility to the collection for the public.   We completely revamped the internal artifacts DB/TextWorks database to current standards by implementing our best practices in database design, adding validation lists and cleaning out unused fields and reports. MHC_search_page

However, the fun part was designing the new search of the collections using our Andornot Discovery Interface (AnDI).  It was hard not to get sidetracked looking at some of the bizarre and scary implements! For example, check out the tools for tooth extraction such as the tooth key from circa 1750. Virtually all the items in the collection have images attached which can be viewed in either a list view alongside details of the item, or in a gallery view for quick browsing.

The main collections search page features a quick search box plus "canned searches" for quick access to the main categories such as Cardiology, Dermatology, Obstetrics etc. There is also a slider of images of featured items showcasing various implements, uniforms, bottles and a medicine chest.

The Museum has captured a wealth of information about each item, all of which is searchable.  Search results can be narrowed down by facets for general category, a more in depth classification and MeSH headings.  There is a date facet, plus facets for where the object was made and the manufacturer if these are known. 

Museums and other heritage institutions may borrow items from the collection for their own exhibits, and they can now easily search, select items and send off a request for an object loan to the Museum.  Museum staff are also using this feature to compile sets of records to send to researchers in a PDF report. 

Records can easily be shared on social media such as Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter and MHC_results_pagePinterest, or details can be emailed to a colleague.  Already, the feedback option has been used to help identify information in a set of photographs, and Museum staff are now using the permalink feature to link back to records in their regular “What is it Wednesday” Facebook posts. The new search interface, as with all our new Andornot sites, is designed for use with mobile phones and tablets as well as desktop computers.

The feedback from the Museum staff and users has been very positive.  “ I truly love the new improved version!” and “we receive numerous praise for the new on-line catalogue and how easy it is to use and find objects”, says Kathy Karkut, Collections Manager. “Thank you for your patience as the Museum organized a server, and for the beautiful end product.” Jenny Stepa, Museum Manager and Program Director. The database is maintained locally at the Museum whilst hosting and maintenance of the web search interface is provided by Andornot.

Take a look at some of our other projects using AnDI and contact us for a demo!

Version 3.0 of VuFind, the popular open-source discovery interface, was released April 25, 2016.

This version brings VuFind up to date with important PHP and Solr developments while also adding several new features and offering a straightforward upgrade path from the 2.x series of releases.

Some key additions and changes:

  • Improved support for indexing multiple authors (and other types of creators).
  • New filtering options in “combined search” mode to make your "bento box" search even more flexible.
  • A database-driven record cache to improve performance and permanence when working with third-party APIs.
  • Compatibility with PHP 7 and Ubuntu 16.04.
  • Inclusion of Solr 5.5.0, which adds new indexing features and better Windows support.
  • A significantly rewritten front-end theme offering greater stability, improved ease of customization and a more consistent user experience.
  • New recommendation modules to help guide users to better search results.

Additionally, several bug fixes, new configuration options and minor improvements have been incorporated.

Although VuFind was largely developed by and for academic libraries, we've found applications for it in other organizations, including smaller specialized libraries. Our blog has details of selected projects. In general, we recommend VuFind for organizations with purely bibliographic records and little or no need for customization, a custom graphic design, integration of other features or content, etc. For organizations with those requirements, our Andornot Discovery Interface is a perfect choice.

Contact us to learn more about the VuFind discovery interface and how it might suit your organization.

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