Peel Health Region Upgrades Library Search Interface

Published Apr 23, 2014

The Peel Health Region library in Ontario has been using Inmagic DB/TextWorks for a number of years to manage a small, specialized collection of health care resources.

The library contacted Andornot recently for assistance in updating the public search interface to the catalog. After reviewing the catalog and discussing their needs, Andornot recommended an upgrade to both the DB/TextWorks databases and desktop interface, as well as creating a new web search interface.

The library’s DB/TextWorks Catalog database was upgraded to the latest one from the Andornot Starter Kit, featuring well-designed forms, query screens, and script buttons for easy navigation.

A new public search interface was built from the web portion of the Andornot Starter Kit, and is available at http://peel.andornot.com, hosted by Andornot in our data centre. This interface is based on the Twitter Bootstrap responsive web framework, allowing the site to reformat itself for the user’s browser, so that it’s as usable on full-size desktop browser as on a tablet or smartphone.

Librarian Diana Robertson was particularly interested in linking to PDFs of reports. PDFs are currently stored in a document management system only available internally. With catalog records already available for many of these, linking to the PDFs and making them available in the web interface gives much greater public access.

A list of popular topics on the home page (constructed with the help of the Andornot Search Cannery Wizard) provide quick access to areas of the collection.

The site also features icons to indicate material type, and a selection list to allow users to email, save or print items of most interest to them. These features are standard with the Andornot Starter Kit.