Arctic Health Library

Arctic Health, intended for students, researchers, and anyone with an interest in health aspects of the Arctic, is a central source for information on diverse aspects of the Arctic environment and the health of northern peoples. The Arctic Health website provides access to a database of over 280,000 evaluated publications and resources on these topics. To improve access to this collection, a new search engine has just been launched at https://arctichealth.org

Search results in Arctic Health include published and unpublished articles, reports, data, and links to organizations pertinent to Arctic health, as well as out-of-print publications and information from special collections at the University of Alaska. Resources come from hundreds of local, state, national, and international agencies, as well as from professional societies, tribal groups, and universities.

Arctic Health is managed by the Alaska Medical Library at the University of Alaska Anchorage, by Prof. Kathy Murray and a team of staff. Andornot has worked with this group since 2005 and designed several previous search interfaces using Inmagic WebPublisher PRO and dtSearch.

Prof. Murray approached Andornot last year with several updates in mind, such as to ensure the search results are accessible on mobile devices, not just desktops. Rather than simply adjust the existing site, this precipitated a complete review of the current system, including data entry workflow and the actual content to be included, as well as discussions on a more modern search engine.  

As we do with many projects, Andornot began this challenge by separating out the user groups and functions. Library staff need a system to manage and upload records, with features for adding, editing, converting and validating data. Researchers and health care practitioners, on the other hand, need an easy to use, robust system for searching the vast archive of resources. With such a large number of records, a sophisticated search engine is needed to float the most relevant results to the top of any search.

For the back-end, Andornot developed a web application that uses Inmagic DB/TextWorks for data storage, and Inmagic WebPublisher PRO as a middle layer. We were able to update and re-use an XSLT we'd previously developed that UAA uses to import records in XML format from PubMed. This hybrid approach of using existing commercial software and a custom-developed web application provided the features needed by library staff at a more economical cost than a completely custom written system.

For the public search interface, we used our Andornot Discovery Interface (AnDI). AnDI is a modern search engine based on the popular Apache Solr system, with features such as:

• Excellent keyword search engine and relevancy-ranked search results.
• Automatic spelling corrections and “did you mean?” search suggestions.
• Full text indexing of linked documents.
• Facets, such as subjects, authors, places, dates, and material types, to allow users to quickly and simply refine their search.
• A selection list allows users to mark items of interest as they search, then view, print or email the list.

AnDI helps users quickly find relevant materials from the large collection at Arctic Health and is a significant improvement over the previous search options.

Both systems in this solution are hosted by Andornot as part of our Managed Hosting Service.

Check out the new iteration of the Arctic Health resource database at https://arctichealth.org, and contact Andornot for help with your project.