The Arnprior and McNab/Braeside Archives, just outside Ottawa, has hosted their website and online archival collections and exhibits with Andornot for many years. Each year, their online presence has grown with newly digitized resources and new exhibits about their area.

In 2020, thanks to a Library and Archives Canada Documentary Heritage Communities Program grant, they were able to:

• upgrade their version of our Andornot Discovery Interface to the latest version, with features such as a rotating carousel of images on the home page, full text search of linked PDFs, and a "More Like This" option to find related resources;
• digitize an extensive array of new materials, including 40-50 large format maps, and display those maps in search results using our image zooming feature;
• create a new DB/TextWorks database of local historic landmarks and places abd add a mapping feature to the site to allow users to explore these;
• upgrade the Umbraco content management system that powers the non-search portion of the site and add a blog feature to keep fresh content flowing more easily; and
• refresh the graphic design of their website with a new, modern look.

These enhancements join content added in recent years such as:

• a digitized newspaper collection to 1937
• birth, marriage and death abstracts to 1934
• Town of Arnprior Bylaws (1960 to 2014, with 1970 onwards searchable)
• McNab Township Bylaws (1846 to 1950, browsable only)

The ongoing enhancements and new content added to the Arnprior and McNab/Braeside Archives website and search engine help researchers and residents of the area to better explore their local history.

"I want to thank Jonathan, Peter, and Kathy for all your hard work on this project. It is very, very much appreciated. The new website is what we have been hoping for since we first launched it a number of years ago. And the extra features give us much greater flexibility in the future. And we are very pleased you were able to add the ability to search across the pdfs within this project. Thanks for your patience as you explained things to us and guided us through the project."
-- Irene Robillard, President, Arnprior & McNab/Braeside Archives.

Earlier blog posts about Andornot's work with the Arnprior & McNab/Braeside Archives:

• Addition of digitized newspapers to the Arnprior Archives’ search interface
• Arnprior Archives' Virtual Exhibit: 150 Years of Living Off the Land

The Arcadia Public Library's history collection supports the library's mission to collect and preserve materials relating to the cultural and intellectual heritage of the City of Arcadia, California.

Significant holdings include photographs from the Arcadia Tournament of Roses and Santa Anita Assembly Center for the Japanese, U.S. Army Balloon School papers, and a collection of books written by Arcadia authors. Other items focus on Elias DJ. "Lucky" Baldwin, Los Angeles County Arboretum, and Santa Anita Park Racetrack. The history of the City of Arcadia is documented from its incorporation in 1903 and includes information on local government, businesses, and maps.

Holdings currently comprise some 2000 photographs, three file cabinets of newspaper clippings, Arcadia City Directories from 1923 to the present, Arcadia school yearbooks, scrapbooks, Arcadia newspapers on microfilm from 1931 and Arcadia census on microfilm. Most of the collection ranges in date from the 1870's to the present.

Andornot worked with library and city staff to upgrade their older DB/TextWorks databases, clean up some of the data, and provide access to the results through our DB/TextWorks hosting service. We then developed and host a modern search interface using our Andornot Discovery Interface, available at https://arcadiahistory.andornot.com

The online collection provides access to documents, newspaper clippings, citations, and obituaries, as well as photos and paintings relating to Arcadia.

The home page features a rotating selection of watercolour paintings, as well as Quick Start links to other areas of the collection, ideal for new users. The graphic design of the site was matched to a new website for the library, for a relatively seamless transition from one to the other.

The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies aims to foster an appreciation of mountain culture by preserving, providing access to, exhibiting and interpreting materials related to the mountain cultural and heritage of Western Canada. Their collections include:

An Art Collection that spans the early 1800's to the present day and includes regionally created and related works by Canadian and international artists.

A Heritage Collection of artifacts that help tell the stories of Indigenous Peoples, artists, immigrants, guides and outfitters, climbers, surveyors, hikers, explorers, adventurers, skiers and residents of the town and area.

An Archives of over 800 fonds with approximately 350 metres of textual records, more than 700,000 photographs, and over 1,500 sound recordings, motion pictures and videos. Dating from the mid-19th century to the 21st century, these records document not only the people who created them, but also the broader social, political, and economic history of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

A Library of over 8,500 books, rare maps, periodicals and newsletters film documentaries, clipping files, and complete collections of newspapers from Banff and Canmore. Since 1971, the Archives and Library has also been the custodian of the Alpine Club of Canada Library, which contains over 4,000 books and periodicals documenting the mountain cultures of the world from the mid-1600s to current.

This wealth of resources is available for online searching at https://archives.whyte.org and powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface. The sophisticated algorithms and relevancy-ranked results in the search engine help users quickly find items of interest from the almost 100,000 records in the site.

Unique to this site is a quick and easy online ordering system that allows users to order images for personal or commercial use and pay online instantly by PayPal, with high resolution images supplied by the museum for specific needs.

Underlying this site are databases managed with both Filemaker and Inmagic DB/TextWorks, the latter with our Starter Kits for Libraries and Archives for a consistent interface and fields across several databases.

The City of Richmond, B.C., uses Inmagic DB/TextWorks to manage the minutes of council and committee meetings as well as their municipal archives collections. This database has been available for City staff to search for many years, but Andornot has just helped the City to launch this database publicly, along with a new option for the public to see the voting records of councillors. This extra functionality was requested by Council and thanks to the flexibility of DB/TextWorks, the City Clerk’s Department was able to adjust the database so that this voting data could be extracted.

This database of council and committee meeting minutes is now publicly searchable online at https://www.richmond.ca/cityhall/council/councildecisions/about.htm using an interface developed by Andornot and based on Inmagic WebPublisher PRO.

Users can search for meetings and decisions of interest by keyword, date, subject, personal name, and committee name. Results show the most recent meetings first, and are usually available online once the minutes have been adopted, usually within about a month of the meeting.

Voting Record. A tabular display of the voting record of the current mayor and council is available at https://www.richmond.ca/cityhall/council/votingrecord.htm We used the open-source Tabulator javascript library, pulling data exported to JSON format from the same DB/TextWorks database as the full council minutes search above.

The tool allows citizens to view the voting record of each mayor and council member on each topic of each council and committee meeting, with options to limit their view by date and keyword. Users may click links to view the full minutes of the meeting, and click through to the record in the above search using the record’s permalink.

The City was able to capitalize on their existing software and ongoing use and expertise with DB/TextWorks. Andornot’s expertise with DB/TextWorks, JSON and web development was key to quickly putting all the pieces together for a successful launch.

There are often opportunities to extract data and repurpose it in a different format. In this case we were able to research and implement a solution for the voting record quickly and effectively.

Andornot has hosted the Canadian Jewish Heritage Network website and search engine since its inception in 2011. CJHN brings together archival and genealogical resources from seven Jewish archives across Canada, in a single, easy to use search engine. Both archival and genealogical resources searchable together, despite each having quite different data schemas and fields.

CJHN was one of the first sites to use our Andornot Discovery Interface (AnDI), and one of our first mobile-friendly sites too, but has just been upgraded to the latest version of AnDI. Some of the key aspects of the site include:

• Sophisticated search options with relevancy-scores results of 145,000 records.
• Over 20,000 photographs available in traditional list views as well as a gallery style display.
• An embedded YouTube video player allows streaming of the site’s 73 audio and video recordings.
• A bilingual English-French interface expands access.
• While searching, users can add items to a temporary list, then email, save or print the list, as well as submit a request for more information about any of the items in the list directly to any one of the individual member repositories.

The 2019 upgrade eliminated a separate Umbraco-powered content management system and frames-based embedding of search results in favour of a single web application (AnDI) with a small number of static content pages to describe the site and its contents and partners.

"We are thrilled with the new face of cjhn.ca. Everyone who has used it since the re-launch comments on how refreshed and clear it looks. The staff at the Canadian Jewish Archives, and all our actively contributing site partners are very pleased with the new interface's enhanced navigation features and the way that mobile access has been improved across all platforms. Getting rid of the frames-based structure is a particularly notable asset, as we no longer have to expect our users to rappel up a pair of ever-receding scroll bars in order to reach the top of a page and move to the next. We love the colours, too!"

— Janice Rosen, Archives Director, Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives

Earlier Andornot Blog Posts about CJHN

Canadian Jewish Heritage Network Launches

Canadian Jewish Heritage Network Launches Enhanced Search and Mobile Interface

Canadian Jewish Heritage Network Now Offering a Single Search Across Multiple Data Sources