Refreshed Heritage Tool Enhances Libraries Service

An online tool which allows Hamilton City Libraries customers to search for images of the city's history has been refreshed and enhanced.

The tool, Heritage Collections, is part of the Hamilton City Libraries website and has been improved through the use of a new online system called Recollect.

Heritage Team Librarian Susy Thomas says the new tool will be rolled out this month, and means customers will have an improved browsing experience as they search for historic material.



"One of the main advantages of Recollect is we can create connections between the materials we have available," she says. "For example, you might start searching for material on Hamilton Borough, and previously been limited to those specific images – now users will find far more click-through links to connected images from the same period of time."

"It's a lot more user-friendly, and much easier for customers to find items relating to their searches."
The libraries’ heritage collections consist of a huge range of photographs, business advertising, archives, manuscripts, maps, and oral history interviews, as well as books, magazines and newspapers.  Heritage Collections will go live with about 1000 of those items.

The introduction of the new system also means a wider range of materials are available to customers.
Recollect is structured like an internet search engine, which means a customer's keyword search returns a more relevant range results than the old Content DM system. A single picture will now have more search terms assigned to it, meaning it will appear in more searches.

Hamilton Collections also reflects an aspect of the Hamilton City Libraries Strategic Plan – more of the libraries service's material available in electronic format to customers.

Demonstrations will be held on Level 3 of the Central Library at 12:20pm on 16, 17 and 18 August.