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The LancasterHistory online Research Collections provides searchable access to nearly 300,000 items from their historic collections, from library books and archival documents to photographs and three-dimensional objects.

LancasterHistory is also proud to announce the launch of the James Buchanan Presidential Library, which provides online access, for the first time, to the papers of 15th United States President James Buchanan and his family.

This collection includes  more than 3,500 items associated with James Buchanan, Harriet Lane, and James Buchanan Henry, extended family members, associates, and Wheatland, Buchanan's home. Scholars and researchers can search and view the digitized collection to examine the events that transpired during Buchanan’s presidency and gain a better understanding of how the United States responded to one of the most fraught periods in American history.

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The LancasterHistory Research Collections site is powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface, which provides features such as automatic spelling corrections, intuitive search suggestions, and refinable search filters.

Data in the site is sourced and regularly updated from a variety of back-end systems: PastPerfect for archival descriptions, artifacts and photographs, and MARC records exported from their library’s cataloguing system. Andornot developed systems to transform each different data source into a common format and index it in our Andornot Discovery Interface, for searching across all collections, while still preserving the metadata unique to each record and data source.

The full text of many linked digital documents is indexed, to further expand search options.

Searching across all LancasterHistory collections previously required many separate searches, using different search strategies and tools. Now, with all resources in a single site, searching is faster and easier and reveals more records to users with every search.

As the site is hosted by Andornot, there’s nothing for LancasterHistory staff to do or worry about, and they can add new data as often as they like.

Visit the site at https://collections.lancasterhistory.org

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 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.

Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

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 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

California State Railroad Museum

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.

For the third year in a row, Andornot is pleased to award a Professional Development Grant to a working professional, to aid them in attending a conference or workshop.

This year’s recipient of the $1,000 grant is Marla Dobson, Curator of the Museum of Health Care in Kingston, ON.

Marla-Dobson

In her application for the grant, Marla writes:

As the Curator for the Museum of Health Care at Kingston, I have responsibility for planning, organizing, and supervising exhibition development, collections development and maintenance, as well as programming support. I care for a collection of 40,000 objects related to the history of medicine and health care in Canada. I also act as an ambassador for the museum, building its public profile within the regional community as well as at national and even international events.

The collection is available at https://mhc.andornot.com, with a search interface developed from our Andornot Discovery Interface, and hosted by our Managed Hosting service.

Marla adds:

I wish to attend the Canadian Museums Association National Conference because it is vital that I develop and expand my professional network within the Canadian museum community. I am new in my position and as an emerging professional, wish to expose myself to workshops and networking events that will firstly, improve my ability to be a successful curator, and secondly, help me make connections with other organizations with which we could partner on projects and exhibitions.

Andornot strongly believes in the value of attending conferences to foster professional development. We attend events across Canada all year long to learn about new trends and technologies, meet with clients, and share our expertise with like-minded folks.

We receive many excellent applications for this grant each year and face a tough decision in choosing just one. We thank all who showed an interest in the grant and only wish we could send everyone to a conference.

We look forward to meeting you at one of the conferences we’ll be attending this year.

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