Recollect would like to congratulate the University of Adelaide on winning the Mander Jones Category 3 award for Adelaide Connect, their special collections platform.
Awarded to the organisation with the “best finding aid to an archival collection held by an Australian institution or about Australia”, the Mander Jones Category 3 award celebrates archival tools that both enable access and promote engagement with archival collections. Particular weight is given to innovative tools that ‘fill a gap’ in the sector, incorporate ancillary aids where appropriate, and contemplate ease of use and user experience.
When commenting on Adelaide Connect, the Australian Society of Archivists states:
“This is an innovative portal leading researchers to the information they seek across multiple formats. [Adelaide Connect’s] search function is precise and accurate, and the metadata includes the original item or collection number to help find similar items. This provides an effective system that could be a model for other institutions wishing to provide a way into their collections”
– Australian Society of Archivists
The University Library worked with DatacomIT to launch Adelaide Connect, built on the Recollect CMS platform. The repository currently holds over 25,000 publicly available items, including 4,000 images, over 2,000 publications and various collections relating to the University of Adelaide’s academic pursuits such as the Early Female Graduates series, a collection of Tjunaringanyi newsletters issued by the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music, and a memorial project relating to Fallen WWI Anzacs Remembered.
The University of Adelaide’s achievement marks the second consecutive year of a Recollect-based digital collection repository winning a Mander Jones Award for best finding aid to an archival collection. Previously, The City of Sydney’s CAMPAS (City Archives Management and Public Access System) initiative was recognised for it’s systemic redesign of various catalogues into one Recollect-based catalogue with the users’ experience central to design decision, while representing “how the next generations of archival catalogues could work”.
The Mander-Jones Awards are awarded annually at the Australian Society of Archivists annual conference. Conditions of entry, available categories and further information is available on the ASA Mander Jones Awards webpage. Recollect encourages all applicable organisations to consider providing a nomination once available.
About Recollect
Recollect supplies a comprehensive cloud-based software as a service solution that ensures collections are easily accessible with a unique focus on discovery tools, helping inspire community engagement and storytelling to over 100 archives, libraries, and local government organisations around the world.
