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.

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

The California State Railroad Museum (CSRM) offers researchers, rail fans and the public a search interface to its many separate collections using the Andornot Discovery Interface, at https://csrm.andornot.com

The collections include historic photographs, railroad menus, employee timetables, maps and technical drawings, books and other publications, archival finding aids, and more.

CSRM previously had a separate search interface to each database, without features users have come to expect, such as spelling corrections, search suggestions, and relevancy-ranked results. Now users can search the combined collection and find related records across all these sources with ease.

Search results are presented in both a list view for quick scanning of metadata and a gallery view (shown above) for a more visual appearance, with the option to expand records for complete information, stream videos, open PDFs with search words pre-highlighted, save and share records on social media, and other features that make the site a pleasure to use.

Behind the scenes, most of the data is managed in a series of Inmagic DB/TextWorks databases. CSRM creates archival finding aids  which are contributed to the Online Archive of California, and their audio visual materials are uploaded to the Internet Archive. Andornot developed procedures to regularly harvest resources from these two sources, as well as to index the contents of the DB/TextWorks databases.

The graphic design of the site uses the standard layout of the Andornot Discovery Interface, customized to match the main CSRM website for a seamless transition from one to the other.

The site is hosted by Andornot as part of our Managed Hosting Service.

The law library of the Law Society of New Brunswick has just upgraded their library catalogue public search interface to one powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface.

Available in both English and French at https://www.nblawlib-bib.ca, the catalogue allows lawyers around the province to search holdings in each main city where the society has a library collection, and to filter their results by date, subject, author, language and type of material. Additional features such as spelling corrections, search suggestions and relevancy-ranked results help connect users to resources quickly and accurately.

Behind the search interface, library staff use Inmagic DB/TextWorks to manage their data.

The site is hosted by Andornot as part of our Managed Hosting service.

Contact us for help managing and searching your legal collections, libraries and other information resources.

The Canadian Medical Association publishes policies and briefs on a wide range of health topics, representing the position of the CMA's members.

This database has long been available online, but is now powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface.

The new site is available at https://policybase.cma.ca and is hosted by Andornot within our Managed Hosting service.

The site offers users the features they expect from a modern search engine: spelling corrections, "did you mean" search suggestions, relevancy ranked results powered by sophisticated algorithms, and facets such as topic, year, and type of policy to quickly and easily refine a search.

Policies are available as PDFs linked from search results, and the full text of each PDF is indexed and searchable too. If any search words are found in the full text, a snippet of the relevant passage showing the words in context is displayed in search results. The user may then click a single button to open the policy in their browser 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.

The site is available in English and French - not only the user interface, but all the metadata and PDFs too - allowing users to search and fully interact with the site in either language.

Policies are managed in a DB/TextWorks database by CMA Library staff. 

Updating the CMA PolicyBase was long overdue. We needed to update the interface and functionality to make it more user friendly. While it seemed like an overwhelming task, Jonathan guided us through each step of the process.  We're really pleased with the end result, so much so that we're now converting other databases to the Andornot Discovery Interface.

-- Debbie Ayotte, Associate Director, Policy Research & Support, Canadian Medical Association

A separate Physician Workforce Survey search engine is available at https://surveys.cma.ca and is also powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface and hosted by Andornot.

Contact Andornot for information management and search solutions for your medical and other collections.