Veenendaal shows photo collection with CONTENTdm

Veenendaal, 27 January 2006 - The archives of the Dutch city of Veenendaal is OCLC PICA’s first European customer to use CONTENTdm for managing its digitised photo collection and putting it online for anyone to see. Veenendaal not only proves how easy it is to use this solution for getting all kinds of media online. Also the Veenendaal archives have translated the CONTENTdm interface into Dutch and integrated the contents of the photo collection into their website, showing CONTENTdm’s flexibility and potential.

History has become quite popular again lately. People want to know about their ancestors, about what happened in their city and what their street used to look like. The Veenendaal City Archives anticipated on this development and decided to put parts of their collection online. Among that collection are a large number of photos and postcards. Digitising them was not a challenge, but managing the files and easily getting them online was.

"We chose CONTENTdm because it was the most user-friendly solution for our needs," says Dave Eickhoff, archivist at the Veenendaal City Archives. "We work with volunteers, who are not always very IT experienced. But they could use this system very well. On top of that, we liked the fact that CONTENTdm is a complete package and does not require any modules and user licenses to be bought separately."

Dave Eickhoff set up CONTENTdm exactly the way Veenendaal wanted it: integrated into the City Archives’ website. And because the contents had to be as accessible as possible, he translated the English interface into Dutch - one of the many possibilities to adapt the software precisely to the individual requirements.

The volunteers took care of scanning an initial 1,500 pictures and put them online and added metadata. The archives also put current pictures of city views in the database, to allow viewers to compare views of the past and present. The plan is to eventually have an archive with tens of thousands of pictures available to the public. Thanks to CONTENTdm these will then be accessible from anywhere in the world, without any danger of wear and tear, and irrespective of opening hours and staffing. There are many ideas for adding 8 mm films, maps, notarial deeds and more.

For a direct view of the Veenendaal photo collection, which has been online since 1 December 2005, go to www.gemeentearchief.veenendaal.nl. In the last 30 days, the website had over 1,500 unique visitors.

About Veenendaal
Veenendaal is a lively city in the heart of the Netherlands, in the south-eastern corner of the central province of Utrecht. More than 61,000 people, over 2,500 businesses, some 550 shops and numerous other public facilities keep the city in motion. The development of Veenendaal has not come to an end, with a completely new city district being finalised in the coming years. Veenendaal currently holds about the 52nd position in the Dutch city ranking in terms of inhabitants.
The City Archives’ oldest piece dates from 1546 and comes from the Peat Council, that used to organise the turf digging in those years. Veenendaal literally translates into ‘turf valley’. Over the past few years, the City Archives have acquired various postcard, press photo and amateur photo collections. The total collection of the Veenendaal City Archives fills about 2.5 km shelf space.

About CONTENTdm
CONTENTdm provides a complete solution to help libraries, archives, museums and other institutions store, manage and deliver their digital collections to the web. They can showcase a wide range of media type from photographs, documents, newspapers and maps to audio and video files. With CONTENTdm, they can turn their special collections into fully searchable online resources available from any web browser.

For more information, please contact OCLC PICA Communications by e-mail or by telephone at +31-(0)71-5246500.