Skip to the content Back to Top

Founded in 1977, the Inuit Circumpolar Council has grown into a major international non-government organization representing 180,000 Inuit from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Chukotka (Russia) on matters of international importance.

The Canadian branch of ICC has established an archives as the keeper of ICC Canada and its predecessor body’s official records, documenting the work of ICC Canada. The Archives' collection of resources includes archival documents, photographs, and films; a library; and a collection of fine art and cultural artefacts. The Archives preserves and provides access to this documentary heritage for the benefit of present and future generations of Inuit across the circumpolar world.

In 2023, Andornot worked with ICC Canada archivists to build and host data management systems and a public search interface for these collections. Archival data is held in an Access to Memory (AtoM) system, while library and artefact records are managed using FileMaker PRO. Public search access is provided by an instance of our Andornot Discovery Interface, at https://iccc-archives.andornot.com All software and data is hosted by Andornot.

iccc.jpg

Of particular importance to this project was the ability to enter and search information in multiple languages and scripts, both on the data management side and in the public search interface. On the back-end, AtoM and FileMaker both allow entry of information in English using the Roman character set, as well as in Inuktitut using both the Roman Orthography and Syllabic scripts.

On the public side, the AnDI site provides three separate language-script interfaces: English, Inuktitut (Roman Orthography) and Inuktitut Syllabic. Users may toggle between these, with the entire interface and all search results then appearing in the chosen language. This allows someone fluent in Inuktitut to search with Syllabic words, and read results in the same language and script.

While the portion of the collection which is online is still small, it grows daily as archivists are able to describe more records in their possession.

This work complements our other recent work to enable display of Indigenous names and terms in Indigenous languages, from data management systems which don't support the character sets of these languages.

 

The Vancouver Public Library's Special Collections Division manages a variety of local history collections. Several of these are now searchable through an instance of our Andornot Discovery Interface, at https://localhistory.vpl.ca

vpl.jpg

The searchable collections include historic photographs, a registry of Vancouver buildings, and an index of newspaper articles related to the history of British Columbia, totalling almost 70,000 records. More information about these collections is provided on the home page of the new site.

Researchers may search by keywords, relying on the advanced algorithms of the search engine to find relevant materials, or start a search by browsing indexes of names, places and topics to view specific items of interest.

All search results may be refined by facets such as material type, date, names of people and places, and more. The 40,000 photographs may all be viewed immediately online, and historic buildings have links to maps and current street views of their locations.

The Delta Museum and Archives, in British Columbia, is a long time user of Inmagic DB/TextWorks software. Their collections were searchable online for many years, but due to technological change, became unavailable for a time. Now, however, thanks to a re-launch of the collections using our Andornot Discovery Interface, they are available once again, at https://archivesmuseum.delta.ca

Delta-Museum-Archives.jpg

The collection highlights the development of Delta with its large agricultural and fishing history. Almost 40,000 records are available, including over 12,000 photographs of people, places and historical artifacts, and over 200 oral history recordings.

As with all sites build from our Andornot Discovery Interface, users may browse indexes of names, places and subjects, as well as search by keywords, then refine and sort their search results to arrive at ones of interest. Results may viewed in a list, a table and a gallery of images, and interesting ones added to a selection list for further action or to request more information from staff.

The DB/TextWorks software, databases and the Andornot Discovery Interface site are all hosted by Andornot in our Canadian data centre.

The King Institute at Stanford University provides search access to an archival database of tens of thousands of speeches, sermons, letters, and other documents by and about Martin Luther King, Jr. Known as OKRA (Online King Records Access), the database includes descriptive information as well as holdings details for these resources held at repositories all over the United States.

okra-2023.jpg

A search engine for this collection was developed from our Andornot Discovery Interface in 2017, and in 2023, this was upgraded to the latest version of this software. A wealth of new features were brought to the site, as described in this blog post, aiding researchers in locating items of interest.

The site is available at https://okra.stanford.edu/

The Glengarry County Archives has added a further 6 titles to its collection of digitized newspapers. The full text of all issues is searchable at https://newspapers.glengarrycountyarchives.ca and dates back to the 1880s.

Glengarry-2023.jpg

This site is powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface, a great choice for searching all forms of cultural collections and heritage content. It’s particularly useful for searching for the names of people where the spelling may vary or not be known with certainty and where names can appear in different orders (e.g. last comma first, first initial and last name only, wife’s first name and husband’s last name, etc.).

Issues matching a search may be viewed in the built-in viewer with search words highlighted, to direct a user to the best page in the issue quickly.

Learn more about this project, and contact Andornot to discuss digitization of your newspaper and development of a search engine for them.

Categories

Let Us Help You!

We're Librarians - We Love to Help People