Newsletter - October 2010
Greetings!
We've had a busy summer and have recently launched several new
projects with more to go live shortly. As well as the public
sites mentioned below, we've been working on several other projects
including a TV news archive, several private Genie implementations,
an historic glacier image database, museum artifact databases, and
records management systems. There is always something new on
the go.
We've also revamped Archives Online into our Archives Starter Kit with an alternate web
interface for school and college archives, and continued to enhance
our Andornot Starter Kit.
In This Issue
Latest Andornot News
and Projects
Andornot On the Road
We will be visiting Calgary next month - contact
us if you would like to book a site visit.
See us at a Conference:
Drop by our booth at the B.C. Museums Association Conference in Nanaimo
from October 27th to 28th and see our latest designs for museum and
archives databases.
Or check out our conference page for a list of
next year's events.
Andornot Archives Starter Kit update released
We have just announced the release of an upgrade to the
desktop version of our Andornot Archives Starter Kit. This was
formerly known as Archives Online and is an add-on to Inmagic
DB/TextWorks for managing archival accessions and descriptions. The
databases can be adopted as is, or customized for specific needs.
They can also be augmented with other databases available through
Andornot's mix and match options, i.e. for artifacts, library
catalogue, donations, provenance, records management etc. Reports
include forms for printing deeds of gift or loan; hierarchical
finding aids and an EAD XML report.
Our Archives Starter Kit - web version has also
recently been updated to assist you create a web
interface to your descriptive data quickly and easily. This is
based on the Archives Starter Kit fields but can easily be
modified to use fields from any DB/TextWorks archival database
instead. An alternate web interface is also available for
schools or for organizations with just digitized resources, and
features gallery style search results.
Existing users of Archives Online version 2 and 3 may be able to
upgrade for free depending on how much has been customized since
your original purchase. Upgrade assistance is of course also
available on a consulting basis. Contact us to receive a copy of the upgrade
instructions to see whether you would be able to handle this
yourself or would need our help.
Grey literature for the Third Sector
Untapped resources for the non-profit and social services
sector just became more accessible with a new website: threeSOURCE.ca,
put together by the Edmonton Social Planning Council. The new
site primarily consists of a database for these resources from a
variety of groups, primarily located in Alberta, using Inmagic
DB/TextWorks in the background and WebPublisher Pro and the Andornot Starter Kit on the website. The site's
template was designed using Artisteer and then integrated into the Umbraco CMS,
allowing the webmaster to easily modify existing pages and add new
ones without needing to know much HTML. For more information see
our blog post.
Health care expertise at your fingertips 24/7 - MUHC site goes
public
Andornot began working with the McGill
University Health Center (MUHC) on this project for an online
patient education library back in 2007. The site has been available
for just MUHC staff for more than a year while the collection was
being developed. The Health Education Collection can now be
publicly searched at:
http://infotheque.muhc.ca - English Site
http://infotheque.cusm.ca - French Site
Behind the scenes, the application is hosted on Andornot servers
and uses Inmagic WebPublisher PRO for both searching and data
entry. Reached via two different URLs, the French and English sides
of the site are actually one and the same; and bilingual
functionality is provided via resource files easily editable by
authorized MUHC staff. The site also features commenting and
a Did You Mean search option. Check out the our blog post for more details and screenshots of
the data entry interface.
Burnaby's Charting Change Atlas wins ArchivesNext award
ArchivesNext is an American weblog with a monthly audience of
10,000 covering topics related to archives and technology. The
award to the City of Burnaby Archives for "Best re-purposing of
descriptive data" was shared with the Smithsonian Institute.
The Charting Change atlas developed by Andornot and the City of
Burnaby allows users to see how historical events, ranging from
First Nations settlement to the founding of Fort Langley in 1825,
through to the Depression and post-war housing boom have shaped the
community of Burnaby. Behind the scenes, the information shown on
each map point is pulled from the existing Inmagic databases
currently searchable from the Heritage Burnaby website. Heritage
landmarks, historic buildings, and neighbourhoods are plotted and
linked to the records for photographs, artifacts, textual records
and bylaws. We have recently updated the interface to add a zoom feature on the Charting Change Atlas.
For more information on this project, see the press release from the City of Burnaby, the
announcement on the ArchivesNext website or our earlier blog
posts describing the project.
Ottawa Hospital Library Launches Inmagic Genie
The Ottawa Hospital
Library is the latest Andornot client to launch Genie (part of the
Inmagic DB/Text Library
Suite). The hospital library serves both hospital staff and
patients from multiple locations in Ottawa. Previously, staff used
several separate DB/Textworks databases to manage collections of
materials for these different audiences and locations. In moving to
Genie, these databases were consolidated into the single Genie
Catalog to simplify access.
Most of the data conversion, including mapping of fields and
converting data into the Genie databases, was done by librarian
Risa Shorr. As an experienced DB/TextWorks user, Risa was able to
see the similarities between her databases and those used by Genie,
and use the features available in DB/TextWorks to move the data
over. Andornot provided guidance and recommendations as needed.
Read the full details on our blog or take a look at the
new OPAC.
The challenge: creating a travelling virtual exhibit for
locations with no internet access.
UFA Co-operative Limited celebrated their centennial last year
and has created a virtual exhibit, 101 Years of Enriching Rural Life which
features artifacts, music and an interactive display.
This centennial exhibit is travelling throughout rural Alberta,
often to very small centres with no resources or technical support
to set up a public internet connection in the local museum.
The UFA archives uses Inmagic DB/TextWorks and the Andornot Archives Starter Kit to manage their
archival accessions, descriptions and artifacts, so they asked us
if we could help create a display of their photos and digitized
documents. Our solution was to use the free, search only, version
of DB/TextWorks. Read more about working with this runtime
version in our blog post.
Provincial Resource Centre for the Visually Impaired Launches
New Website
The Provincial Resource
Centre for the Visually Impaired (PRCVI) has upgraded their
website with a new graphic design and more content served up by
Inmagic WebPublisher PRO. The previous website was maintained
by hand, as staff time permitted. With many TextWorks databases
already in use at PRCVI for tracking their library collection,
borrowers and teachers, it was a natural extension to catalogue all
the web resources in a new database, then publish that information
on the website with WebPublisher PRO.
Almost all the content in the new website is served up
dynamically via Inmagic WebPublisher PRO from this database thus
making it simple for staff to add and update their website content.
Users may browse resources by category and target audience to drill
down to items of interest, or perform a keyword search. Check out
the full blog post for more details.
Funding opportunities for BC clients
Inmagic
Updates
Watch our blog for news of Genie v3.4 which is expected
shortly.
Tips and Tricks
Know thy users, or at least their searching behaviours
Web server log analysis and Inmagic WebPublisher PRO query logs
can give you a pretty good picture of who is using your great
online database, when, how often, and what they're finding, or
not. Check out our blog post for some suggestions on how to use
these tools.
Do your DB/TextWorks databases need some TLC?
Have you been using DB/TextWorks for years and years? When
we visit clients we often come across databases that were
originally designed in early versions of the software or were even
ported over from DOS. Amazingly, these continue to work
just fine, but as with any system, they could benefit from a
checkup every so often. Check out a few of the quick and easy updates we like to suggest.
A Cool Tool: web based
diagramming and flowcharts
Up to now we've used Microsoft Word (often too simplistic) and
Microsoft Visio (often too complex) to quickly sketch things like a
system diagram, showing how databases and web applications link
together. But now there are various online services that are easy
to use, permit collaboration and are free or nearly so.
Take a look at two of our favorites - Cacoo
and Gliffy.
Have any cool tools of your own that you'd like to share with
other readers?
Send them to us and we'll include them in an upcoming
newsletter or on our developer
blog.
Latest Posts from Our Developers' Blog
Here are the latest posts from Andornot's Developer Blog. Click the link to
read the full article, or subscribe to the 
RSS
feed to stay up to date.
currently scheduled for later this week or early next
week
