The City of Burnaby’s Heritage Burnaby website (www.heritageburnaby.ca) has won one of Heritage BC’s 35th Anniversary awards. Heritage Burnaby won in the category of Heritage Education & Awareness for the upgrades in 2015 to the Heritage Burnaby website and search engine.

This site was initially developed by Andornot in 2008, then upgraded in 2015 to use the Andornot Discovery Interface (AnDI), Instead of having to search each collection separately, users can now type in a keyword and instantly see a combined listing of results from the collections of the City of Burnaby Archives, the Burnaby Village Museum, the Office of the City Clerk and Burnaby Heritage Planning. Searches can be narrowed down through facets for repository, type, date, subject, person, place etc. A good example showing the diversity of material is a search on “carousel” which is one of Burnaby’s heritage landmark buildings. This retrieves nearly 150 records with photos, sound recordings from the Archives oral history collection, books from the Museum library, and documents submitted to council, as well as the artifact records.

The new search interface is also now more forgiving, with automatic spelling corrections and “did “you mean” search suggestions which are very helpful for proper names and places where the user may be unsure of the correct spelling.

As part of this project several publications on the history of Burnaby were digitized and made full text searchable. A couple of these were indexed at the book chapter level to allow zeroing in to specific pages. These are viewable online with search words highlighted. Museum staff have reported that they are now “finding many wonderful connections between photos, records, landmarks, artifacts, and library resources” that were not apparent before. (Lisa Codd, Curator)

The update also included development of a new website with content managed in an Umbraco CMSallowing staff to add blog posts and update content easily. The research page provides more information on the types of materials included, and allows users to search only specific collections, or select neighbourhoods on a map, to see all resources from specific areas. The new website design is responsive to provide a mobile friendly interface, and includes features for streaming audio and video files. Behind the scenes, records are maintained in multiple Inmagic DB/TextWorks databases and extracted and indexed by AnDI when approved for public access.

“Everything you wanted to know about Burnaby is at your fingertips,” as a result of this new upgrade! Please contact Andornot if you’d like to discuss options for updating your search interface or combining a search of multiple types of materials into one combined search.

The AABC website has re-launched with a new design in honour of Archives Week 2011 and the second anniversary of Memorybc.ca.  This project was made possible through NADP funding from Heritage Canada, Library & Archives Canada, and the Canadian Council of Archives. Through an RFP process, the AABC executive selected Andornot to design the new site and migrate the current content.

Old site

New Site

Behind the scenes the site uses the open source Umbraco content management system and is hosted by Andornot.  Individual members of the executive and volunteers now have rights to edit specific sections or pages, and to upload documents into a Media Library.  The WYSIWYG content editor allows them to easily type in content, or to copy and paste from other programs. No knowledge of HTML is required as stylesheets control the formatting. 

The home page is now automatically populated by recent entries from a news blog with an RSS feed.  The same approach has been used for positions listed on the Job Board. Umbraco offers a Publish /Unpublish date feature so jobs can automatically be set to disappear after the closing date. 

Redesigning and migrating a site with so much content created over many years presented some challenges, and we are very grateful for the responsiveness of the AABC executive to our suggestions and recommendations.

“Our site needed updating for many years. The new site is much more user-friendly and is very easy to edit. Information is easier to find for our members and users, and will allow more control and diverse functionality for the AABC executive and contractors. We really like our new logo and how much the overall look and feel matches MemoryBC.ca.  Andornot’s knowledge of the BC archival community helped to make this project run smoothly.”  Jane Morrison, AABC President.

Please contact Andornot for more information.

The Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee National Archives (CJCCCNA) and the Jewish Public Library Archives (JPL-A) are proud to announce the launch of a new website, The Canadian Jewish Heritage Network, at www.cjhn.ca.

As two of the major organizations involved in Canadian Jewish historical research, both located in Montreal, CJCCCNA and JPL-A preserve the memory of Quebec and Montreal’s poets and politicians, its artists and activists, its builders and teachers, its families and philanthropists. Their users can now visit the collections from the comfort of their own desks, searching the online catalogue for archival collections dating from the 18th century onwards. Using the site's selection cart, users can select, e-mail, print or order archival material directly from the web.

More than 25,000 database records from these archival collections are currently online, as well as over 1,500 digitized historic photographs and archival documents. Many complete multi-page documents are available in PDF format. The digitized documents currently online include minutes, annual reports, anniversary publications, sermons, and ephemeral material.

Users of the site can also delve into the CJHN's genealogical research database, which already contains close to 50,000 genealogical records and over 5,000 associated images.

“What you see now on this website is a seamless blend of two repositories' holdings; actually a virtual ‘mind-meld’ of two institutions into a single functional entity helping researchers. Through designing the web site together it has now become natural for us to consult each other in areas of archival acquisition and even software and equipment purchases, sometimes acquiring a digitization tool in one location and trading services with each other.”

Janice Rosen, Archives Director, Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee National Archives

Andornot assisted with this project in many ways, including:

• creating the website using the Umbraco Content Management System;
• developing an archival database based on the Andornot Archives Starter Kit, as well as a separate genealogical database, to hold data from multiple different sources submitted by participating institutions;
• developing data import procedures to allow staff at each organization to keep the live databases up-to-date with their local collections; and
• hosting the website and databases and providing ongoing support and updates.

“Archives are not really about the past, rather we must constantly plan for the future: how will we preserve this for another five hundred years; who is going to use this archive fifty years from now; what will they need and why and so on. With this in mind we know that we will continue to push the limits of the CJHN site. With the help of Andornot's services we are assured that CJHN will grow not just in digital content but also in partners, in use, relevance and profile.”

Shannon Hodge, Archivist, Jewish Public Library Archives

“The CJHN is a model for honouring and preserving our history and traditions – not by locking it away in a dusty archive – but by celebrating, cultivating and sustaining our history for a stronger Canadian Jewish future. The core message of building directly on our communal memory to shape and improve our communal future is a truism that we all should keep in mind.”

Benjamin Shinewald, National Executive Director, General Counsel and Acting CEO of CJCCC

The collection of the Resource Center for Volunteer Organizations (RCVO) has recently come under the management of Volunteer Alberta.  The resources, which focus on the volunteer and nonprofit sector, are available at http://rcvo.org and are hosted by Andornot.  While the collection itself has not changed a great deal from under its previous management, the website interface has been completely redesigned and features a lively new look. 

The site uses the Umbraco content management system to allow RCVO  staff to easily add and modify site content.  Andornot assisted RCVO in the selection of a website design and its development.  Access to the collection is via the Inmagic WebPublisher PRO search interface, with quick and advanced search screens.  A popular feature are the pages of canned searches available as Quick Subject Searches on the quick search page.  An RSS feed is available on the new catalogue additions and Google Book Covers and links augment the site.

A user searching the collection can add items to a cart as well as bookmark or copy the link for each item via its permalink.  The RCVO collection continues to be part of the Canadian Non-profit Library Network along with Imagine Canada and Volunteer Calgary making its combined collection the largest source of materials for this sector in Canada.  RCVO staff commented:

“We have long been working on a website update, and are pleased to have it available for the nonprofit/voluntary sectors. Our ability to link with Imagine Canada and Volunteer Calgary’s library collections makes us an excellent hub for information relevant to the nonprofit/voluntary sector.”

Fraser Health, with its 13 hospitals and 5 main and 8 smaller library locations, is one of the largest Authorities in British Columbia in terms of population served and health and medical resources collectively held.  The web-interface for the library catalogue, which has been hosted by Andornot since 1999, has just been recently completely revamped. 

The new site, at http://library.fraserhealth.ca, uses the Umbraco content management system, allowing authorized library staff from any location to quickly add and change content on the site.  The new catalogue interface features quick and advanced search pages as well as an RSS feed for recent acquisitions on the Quick Search page.  Fraser Health staff can search the catalogue, add selected items to an ordering cart and send in a request for delivery to their nearest hospital library location. 

One of the fabulous new features of the site is the Subject Guides.  Fraser Health Librarian Niki Baumann coordinates this area and has moved all the information from individual BlogSpot websites.  She has completely revamped the interface to this resource rich area of the website by dividing each Subject Guide topic into What’s New, Journals, Books, Databases and Websites and has used the catalogue’s permalink feature to link from the featured new books to the actual record in the catalogue.  The pages are kept constantly up-to-date with embedded RSS feed headlines from various journal websites, with the links to the titles available directly by IP address authentication if within the hospital locations or via a user name and password from outside the hospital.   These resources are now readily accessible to all Fraser Health professionals, from their offices, their homes or on the road. 

During the launch of the site the library staff encouraged users to “play” with the new site and designed a series of questions requiring users to search the catalogue database in order to find the answers.  Once the survey was completed, the user’s name was entered into a draw for a 4GB USB Drive.

“Staff are thrilled with the new catalogue and web site.  We all feel like proud parents who have collectively given birth to a beautiful new child.  The catalogue includes additional special features that allow the user to search for items by format or site with ease.  The site is more streamlined and cleaner, yet offers more content." comments Linda Howard, Interim Library Manager.