Andornot Consulting
Friday, March 05, 2010 8:54 AM

Calgary Inmagic Users Group Meeting: March 24th, 2010

by Kathy Bryce

Join Kathy Bryce and Denise Bonin from Andornot Consulting at a brown bag lunch meeting to learn about the latest features in DB/TextWorks, WebPublisher PRO and Inmagic Genie. We will discuss how to add Google Book Covers and social sharing tools such as AddThis to your web interfaces.

Have a question about an Inmagic product that’s been on your mind? Bring it to the meeting and ask us and your fellow users. If there are any particular topics you would like us to cover, please email us in advance.

Date

Wednesday, March 24th 2010

Time

12:00 to 1:30 pm

Place

City of Calgary Law Department

Calgary Municipal Building

800 Macleod Trail SE

12th Floor

RSVP

RSVP by March 22nd to Elda Figueira at Elda.Figueira@calgary.ca

Tuesday, February 23, 2010 10:23 AM

Andornot Newsletter – February 2010

by Kathy Bryce

Please check out the latest issue of our newsletter.

Contents:

Latest Andornot News

  • City of Burnaby launches Charting Change: An Interactive Atlas of Burnaby's Heritage
  • Law Society of Saskatchewan Launches Genie
  • Andornot Switches Website to Umbraco CMS
  • Andornot On the Road
    • Meet us in Calgary March 23rd to 25th
    • See us at a Conference

Inmagic Updates

Latest Posts from Our Developers' Blog

Tips and Tricks

  • Cleaning Up Validation Lists

Cool Tools

  • Artisteer

Please contact us for further information or to be added to our newsletter list.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 4:20 PM

City of Burnaby launches Charting Change: An Interactive Atlas of Burnaby's Heritage

by Kathy Bryce

Andornot has been working with the City of Burnaby for the last three years, first on the development of the Heritage Burnaby website and then on adding the ability to comment on images in their photo collection. Now this exciting Charting Change Atlas Screenshotnew Charting Change atlas 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. In 2001, Burnaby’s Community Heritage Commission initiated a project to create an atlas mapping all protected heritage resources and other historic sites in Burnaby, illustrating the evolution of the city.  Last year the City approached Andornot to design a new, interactive version of the atlas and funding was obtained through the Canadian Culture Online Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

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. Tools and resources from all of Burnaby's Heritage partners - the City Archives, the Burnaby Village Museum, the Burnaby Planning Department and the Burnaby Historical Society - are combined to provide a unique perspective of Burnaby. 

Coincidentally, Google Street Views became available in the lower mainland, the day of the kick off meeting for this project.  We were able to include this new capability so that users can zoom into many of the heritage sites and historic buildings to view them in their present context - a truly unique feature that offers a rare glimpse of how the landscape of Burnaby has evolved. 

"We have worked with Andornot for the past three years, developing our website and our collections management systems.  Some of the most novel features of our site - particularly the use of Google Street Views in this latest project - have been a direct result of Andornot's creativity and innovation and we are once again thrilled with the final product."  [Arilea Sill, Municipal Archivist, City of Burnaby Archives.]

Please contact Andornot for further information.

Friday, January 22, 2010 10:05 AM

Law Society of Saskatchewan Launches Genie

by Jonathan Jacobsen

The Law Society of Saskatchewan is the latest Andornot client to launch Genie (part of the Inmagic DB/Text Library Suite).

The Law Society Library is a long-time Inmagic user, with several textbases used to manage books, journals, legal resources, and other materials. These databases are maintained in the Society’s two main offices in Regina and Saskatoon, with online access for society members through the society's website.

One of the challenges facing the library was managing all of these databases from separate locations. "We were looking for any way to streamline our core tasks of acquisitions and circulation by eliminating double and sometimes triple data entry and the never-ending battle of syncing databases," says Toby Willis-Camp, Director of Libraries at the Law Society. The library selected Genie as a solution, as it provides a single, central, web-based system for all the core library functions. The library also opted to have Andornot host both the Genie system, as well as the entire society website, with its members-only resources and other searchable databases.

Andornot and the staff in the Law Society Library planned and completed a conversion of several Inmagic databases into the Genie system, with special attention paid to de-duplicating records from similar source databases.

Law_Society_of_Saskatchewan_Libraries_Search_Results While the library staff use the Genie Catalogue, Orders, Serials and other "back-end" modules for their day-to-day work, a new search interface for society members and the public was created, based on the Andornot Starter Kit. This OPAC features:

  • quick and advanced search screens for all library materials;
  • a specific search screen for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) materials;
  • the full text of CPD materials, with a link from the record to a PDF of the material, for immediate online access;
  • tick boxes allow society members to mark items as they find them, then submit a request to the library for those materials, or email a copy of the list to themselves or a colleague, or save or print the list; and
  • icons in the search results to help users more easily identify the types of materials in their search results. Different icons appear for books, journals, websites, DVDs and CPD materials.

"Every time I use the OPAC I break out into a huge smile, because I am so pleased with how it's working and presents the information.  I am absolutely ecstatic about the 'public face' we now present," says Willis-Camp.

Members of the Law Society register in a different online system, but thanks to a behind-the-scenes transfer of information into Genie on a regular basis, the Genie Borrowers database is always up to date with society members.

"It was a year filled with immense change at the Library.  Working with Andornot made most of those changes go more smoothly.  We are looking forward to using Genie at its full potential, and continuing to improve and expand our web presence with Andornot's expert assistance." says Willis-Camp.

Please contact Andornot for more information on Genie, the Andornot Starter Kit, and our hosting and consulting services.

Thursday, January 14, 2010 9:00 AM

Andornot switches website to Umbraco CMS

by Kathy Bryce

Although our website may look much the same, we have recently made radical changes behind the scenes.  We have switched to using a Content Management System (CMS) to allow us to better maintain the website, simplify editing and keep track of all chUmbraco screenshotanges.  We are using Umbraco, an open source CMS based on Microsoft’s ASP.NET.   Moving the site content over was easy, as Umbraco has a WYSIWYG editor and we were simply able to copy and paste the pages.  We made some edits as we went along and re-arranged the navigation so you may find pages you had bookmarked have moved or that you are redirected to new sections.  As anyone maintaining a website knows, upkeep is an ongoing process. Umbraco features great tools for saving drafts for review by others; the ability to publish and unpublish pages on set dates; and captures all edits so that pages can be rolled back if needed.

As part of the migration we also made changes to our blogs and instead of using Blogger we have switched to BlogEngine.Net. Our blogs are the most visited section of our site and this has allowed us to offer  more functionality with a categorized and easily searchable archive. We are also starting to integrate RSS feeds from the various blog categories into pages on our site, so that for example our page about Inmagic Genie will automatically update with the latest blog posts tagged as relating to Genie. Our Twitter feed now appears on our blog page.

One of our core areas of expertise is integrating Inmagic WebPublisher PRO search and results screens into a site template, so we of course made sure that the various pages on our site that include records from our database of sites using Inmagic software also seamlessly fit within our new Umbraco template.

We are thrilled with the functionality and ease of use of Umbraco and are now offering Umbraco site design and hosting to clients interested in updating their website or creating a new one. Please contact us to discuss possibilities and pricing.

We also always welcome any comments on our website, especially topics that you would like to see included.