Alaska Resources Library & Information Services VuFind

The Alaska Resources Library & Information Services (ARLIS) was created by merging the staff and collections of eight Anchorage natural resources agency libraries. Among the many resources it manages are two VuFind systems, providing search access to bibliographic information:

1. The Pipe Files, an index of Alaska North Slope natural gas pipeline work from the past 40 years.
2. The Susitna Doc Finder, a comprehensive catalog of documents that have resulted from every phase of the historic 1980s Susitna Hydroelectric Project (SuHydro Project), as well as those documents continually being produced since 2010 under the current Susitna-Watana Hydroelectric Project (SuWa Project).

Andornot has developed, upgraded and maintained both VuFind sites for ARLIS for many years.

Both VuFind systems index MARC records that are initially catalogued in ARLIS’s main library system, then exported to MARC format for import to VuFind.

The Susitna Doc Finder also indexes additional records managed in an Inmagic DB/TextWorks database, and the Pipe Files also has a separate search index of the periodic newsletter "Oil & Gas News Briefs", published in PDF format.

Most records in both systems include links to locally stored PDFs, the full text of which is also extracted, indexed and made searchable. Cover images of these PDF reports are generated during indexing and appear in search results, in several sizes, both for visual interest, and to give a glimpse of a report before clicking to download it.

The web interface uses a VuFind theme built from the ever-popular Twitter Bootstrap responsive web framework. Almost all of Andornot's web projects use this or a similar responsive framework to provide the same level of access on devices of all sizes and shapes, from full-size desktop browsers down to tablets and phones.

Results from this VuFind system are also available through Google, as Google has crawled and indexed the VuFind system.

Visit the two VuFind sites at:

• http://arlis.org/thepipefiles/
• http://arlis.org/susitnadocfinder/