University of Toronto: The Erindalian Campus newspapers
Mary Atkinson, Digital Assets Management Technician, and Shelley Hawrychuk, Chief Librarian, both at University of Toronto Mississauga Library (UTML), shared their experiences partnering with the AM Quartex team.
Researchers struggling to find or search UTML’s archival content
AM has a long-standing relationship with UTML, and knew the Library was facing a key challenge.
“Our student newspaper collection was hosted online; there was so much rich content that people couldn’t find or didn’t know we had - and that was highly frustrating,” explained Atkinson.
Hawrychuk told us that the Library used an array of platforms to manage its special collections and this didn’t allow for effective display or use of the content.
We needed a solution to increase the searchability and visibility of our collections. We really wanted people to discover our content.
A solution that was easy to set up, without technical expertise
The Library’s researchers had long been familiar with AM’s content and platform, and when the AM team first talked to Atkinson and Hawrychuk about launching Quartex, they were immediately confident that the new platform would be easy to use and would meet their requirements.
Throughout implementation, Atkinson was able to easily build The Erindalian collection using the Quartex out-of-the-box platform. This collection of digitised newspapers provides coverage of student politics, activities and campus events, and features original poetry and cartoons.
Some of the key features that the team found invaluable in Quartex were easy creation of document lists, ability to sort documents by category, ability to upload different material types, and most critically, OCR functionality.
Increased visibility and further projects on the horizon
Through Quartex, we can now publish our collections on one robust platform, making them discoverable and easy to use.
UTML saw Quartex as an opportunity to use this one platform to present its digital products.
This collection, The Erindalian, is the first step along the journey of providing increased visibility of the University’s wealth of content.
Hawrychuk said, “the support from the Quartex team has been great. Sometimes it’s hard dealing with vendors and publishers but we always enjoy working with AM. Their excitement for the platform is contagious!”
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