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St. Andrew’s College in Aurora, Ontario recently asked Andornot to help upgrade the presentation of its online archival collections. The collection includes digitized photographs, school yearbooks and alumni magazines dating back to the school’s first years in the 1900s. The upgraded site provides alumni and others with a fascinating journey through the school’s history. Alumni may now browse and search very easily for memories of their time at SAC.

SACAndornot upgraded the SAC archives’ DB/TextWorks database to the latest version of our Archives Starter Kit, upgrading the desktop forms and query screens as well as the web application. Some highlights of the new website include:

  • Social bookmarking and permalinks allow users to share records with friends via email, Facebook, Twitter and other online services.
  • Results may be viewed in a gallery-style grid layout or in a more traditional list, as well as sorted by relevance, title and date.
  • The website features the front cover image of yearbooks and alumni magazines; however, the full contents have been digitized and are hosted by the Internet Archive. Search results provide links to view content in various formats, including PDF and as an online flipbook. See, for example, this record: http://archives.sac.on.ca/permalink/925 and its View Online Flipbook link.
  • The photo commenting feature allows users to identify students and others in photographs. Users can circle individual people or faces in a photograph and provide the name or other comments for that person. Comments are emailed to the school archivist for review and to update records.
  • Thumbnails and enlarged images are generated dynamically from a single master image.
  • The selection list allows users to save or print the list, as well as to mark records of interest to email to themselves or to friends. In the future, users may be able to order reprints of photographs online.
  • The new website layout complements the school website for a seamless transition from one web application to another.

Andornot created many of the archival records from a data conversion: SAC had digitized thousands of photographs, all saved to DVD. Andornot took those image files, extracted identifying information such as name and dates, and used that information to create initial records. This saved considerable time compared with manual database entry for each record. The College archivist will enhance the records further with names and other identifying information, in part from comments received through the photo commenting feature.

Search the archives here.

Contact Andornot to learn about upgrading your school’s online archives or photograph collection to a similar level.

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