SiteControl Cast Studies
State Records
State Records of South Australia needed a website that would help to engage and inform people about the history of our state and the Archives role in preserving that history. There is a very diverse group of people who use the archives, from aboriginal people searching for information about their past, to school children, family historians and government agencies. Vmedia have divided the enquiries into three distinct groups, the family/public research group, the group who are interested in the activities of State Records, and the government group. To help direct users when they first enter the site, we developed bylines and colour themes as navigation aids, appealing to the visitor and making their initial direction clear.
This site is managed by Vmedias Site Control with a development – live publishing environment, and full browser based control of the site. The interface was designed to fit their specific needs, which include stringent metadata, version control and document expiry requirements. This makes updating the site, keeping track of document versions, and maintaining a consistent look very achievable for them.
The State Records site manages passwords in a way that allows natural persons to belong to several groups, to allow on-line training course management, forum groups and administration privileges to be separately managed yet connected for client or staff details, email, mailing lists etc.
Plans for the site currently underway include an on-line training service, shop and photo archive.
The SRSA intranet is linked to the internet, appearing as extra pages and sections to internal staff, and being managed via the same interface. It is intended in the future that the site will be customised for more targeted information delivery to certain user groups. The flexibility of Site Control has enabled a very customised approach for this site, with the integration of extra features, extended metadata management, customised displays and user profiling, all managed from one browser based administration system. Now that's control!