High Life Highland’s Am Baile website has been given a new lease of life. Not only does it have a shiny new website but it also has a new home, as part of the Highland Archive Service.
For those of you who don’t know, Am Baile was founded in 2000 by a consortium led by Highland Council. Its goal was the creation of a digital archive spanning the history and culture of the Highlands and Islands and comprising material which had hitherto, for various reasons, been difficult to access. Since then, thousands of items from archives, libraries, museums and private collections have been digitised and put online.
The original website was launched in May 2003 and won several awards, both for the range of content offered and the innovative ways in which it was delivered. That website served us well but we need to move with the times and keep up with users’ expectations and so we entered into a contract with Capture Ltd to create a new database and website.
The new site offers all the same content but the delivery has significantly improved. For example, images can now be viewed at much higher resolutions and videos have been encoded to a higher quality. Searching is now faster and there are more options to refine the parameters to get more relevant results.
Presenting the culture and heritage of the Highlands and Islands in the Gaelic language, and providing a resource for Gaelic speakers and learners have always been key objectives for Am Baile and so the new site can be used in Gaelic and English with an option of switching language at any time.
The new site was launched in early December on the same URL – www.ambaile.org.uk – I would love to hear your comments and feedback. New material is added every week, and will be for the foreseeable future, so be sure to check the site regularly.
Jamie Gaukroger, Am Baile Co-ordinator
