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eGoverment Archive of Irish Historical Buildings - NIAH Case Study

www.buildingsofireland.ie

The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (NIAH), a unit in the Department ofthe Environment, Heritage and Local Government, was established to fulfill Ireland's obligations under the Granada Convention. It was created to build and maintain a national record of buildings of historical importance in Ireland. The intention from the outset was to publish records on a website.

The Requirement

To correctly archive and maintain a constantly growing number of records of protected buildings in Ireland, the NIAH had to document and manage huge volumes of text and photographs. The NIAH also had plans to expand the scope of the archive to include gardens of historical interest as well as a resource of useful reference materials.

By early 2004, the NIAH decided that it needed an innovative approach to the maintenance and presentation of its archive as well as in keeping the information it holds as accessible and up-to-date as possible for all its audiences.

Process, Challenges and Solutions

The NIAH recognised that such a large project needed specialist skills and technology to enable it to focus on what it does best: creating and maintaining records of Irish buildings of interest. This would be a pioneering iniative as no equivalent government body anywhere else in the world had ever attempted to place such an enormous archive of information regarding buildings of interest online.

TERMINALFOUR's easy-to-use WCM, Site Manager, gives the NIAH a very practical and efficient platform to meet its evolving requirements. It enables the creation of templates that provide a unique level of automation for publishing the huge number of records in a fast and transparent manner. This would not be possible through a normal web design process. Having reviewed all of the requirements, the NIAH chose to outsource the complete online publishing process to TERMINALFOUR. The benefits of bringing its archive online were immediately realised by the NIAH, with individual counties and areas quickly and successfully publishing relevant records on the website. TERMINALFOUR can rapidly publish records concerning a new area online within a short time of receiving the data. Going forward, all future records will be published automatically to www.buildingsofireland.ie.

The Outcome

The website has proved to be a phenomenal success for the NIAH. TERMINALFOUR's innovative yet practical approach to the maintenance and publishing of these public records ensures that important data is more readily available, easily found and quickly edited and updated. It also facilitates easy re-publishing, so that amendments can be made as appropriate.

As the site gains more attention, our scalable solution will allow hundreds of thousands of photographs and records to be held on the site. The number of page impressions of the website continues to grow and vastly improves the accessibility of the content of the site. Information can also be added, amended and published instantly, so that the records are consistently an accurate representation of current information.Through the use of Site Manager, the NIAH makes this valuable resource of historically important content more immediately available to many more audiences, than could be achieved through traditional methods of publication  alone, for the same investment.