The Roman Catholic Diocese of Hamilton Archives, erected on February 29th, 1856, is mandated through the Code of Canon Law and by the Bishop of Hamilton to collect and preserve the official records of the Diocese and have them available for research. After 150 years of collecting a professional archivist assumed the task of automating the organizing and research processes.

Vancouver, BC – June 19, 2008 – In October of 2007 the Diocese empowered their new professional archivist, Dominy Williams, with the task of automating the management of their archival holdings. “The Diocese of Hamilton Archives was essentially ‘starting from scratch’ in terms of the documentation and description of our holdings,” stated Williams. “The undertaking of inputting data is a large task and thus we wanted a database that would be flexible, user-friendly, and would provide room to grow as we develop over time.”

As well as being a professional archivist, Williams is very computer experienced. She knew exactly the support required for automating the processes, but she has a small budget and limited staff. Her professional skills would have to focus on the archives and could not be siphoned off to re-invent or support the technology. “After researching several options it was decided that Eloquent Archives™ was the best software and that using Eloquent’s Software as a Service package was the right choice for our needs,” was her conclusion regarding an affordable and painless solution to automation.

You can learn more about the reasons for her decision and her satisfaction after six months into the project by reading her Project Review. “I am very pleased that we are able to price our services for small institutions and give them the same function enjoyed by the very large,” said Merv Richter, President of Eloquent Systems Inc. “Costs are shared by the larger customers and our software engineers are able to specialize on Knowledge Management applications. They are always available and understand what the customer is talking about.”

Watch for the announcement when these rich archival holdings go online to the public. As soon as there is enough data in the database it is just a matter of placing a link on the Diocese Website directing the public to it.

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