New website BMArchives.org has been launched. The site provides world-wide unique selection of digitised visual and cartographic historical material (over 30,000 images and almost 7000 high-resolution maps) for the public and international scientific community, opening up avenues into a major resource base for 19th and 20th century history of Christian missionaries.

The large archive of maps, photos and archival finding aids counting over 60.000 items is now available online and accessible to anybody who is interested. Coverage of the documents is very broad and includes mostly Africa, Asia and Oceania.

Klokan Technologies participated in development of this exciting project with customization of the open-source Omeka system, with development of a unique instant search technology based around a fast JavaScript interface (powered by Closure Library and AJAX), with application of IIPImage to stream large number of images and with Georeferencer to turn those images into maps.

The metadata follows the international standards: archival description is done in compliance with ISAD(G), and individuals and organisations are described using ISAAR (CPF). In addition, thesauri are being used for geographical and subject terms. The synchronization of the archival system with the website is implemented via OAI-PMH endpoint and uses the DublinCore metadata standard.

The mentioned technologies are available also to other culture heritage institutions seeking a way how to publish own digital holdings and metadata on the web. Feel free to contact us with your enquiries for customization and application of the used open-source components.