case study: EDHS

:: design, concept, development ::

the Edmonton & District Historical Society's annual History Week created a very common problem: there was a great deal of information to collect, organize and distribute.

the History Week event EDHS organizes includes over 300 events in hamlets, towns, and cities across northern Alberta. The EDHS is responsible for gathering all of the event information, error- and spell-checking the submissions, organizing the information into regions and categories, and assembling a catalogue.

• create a web site for the EDHS History Week that reflects the look of the catalogue
• display History Week information including detailed event information
• eliminate or automate as much of the information management work as possible

• a custom event manager that lets EDHS staff create organization accounts, allowing these organizations to directly add and edit their own events including location (Google Maps), photo, and EDHS-specific information
• EDHS staff managers edit and approve submitted events
• events are organized by date and are fully searchable
• reports generated from event data can be used for brochures, catalogues, or review. Each report includes an index of events and organizations

for the EDHS staff, what used to take months is now accomplished in weeks. Instead of focusing on data entry, management, and sorting, they can now focus upon quality assurance and the History Week itself. There are also many more events because EDHS has time to work with more clients, and the catalogue is better because they no longer have to spend time organizing the contents!

site visitors are presented with an up-to-date, interactive web site that allows them to explore History Week many months before it occurs.