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ArchiveDb is the Falmouth History Archive database. The Falmouth History Archive is located at The Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, known as The Poly, at 24 Church St, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 3EG, UK. The Poly is a registered charity and the Falmouth History Archive is run by a team of dedicated volunteers.

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ArchiveDb, designed in-house by the Falmouth History Archive, serves as both an information resource and a collection management system for our original historic records, documents, photos, maps, and books related to Falmouth and the surrounding area.

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Originally created to meet our need for a low-cost, multi-user database, ArchiveDb allows for the import of diverse existing data and provides a comprehensive, unified search.

 

Data is structured hierarchically, following the typical archival arrangement of Fonds, Series, Files, and Items.

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A 'Quick Search' facility enables users to search the entire database, including the content of attached PDFs.

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ArchiveDb features in detail

  • Multiuser client/server architecture 

  • User interface (UI) designed to reflect the hierarchical, tree-like, nature of archival organisation with fonds at the base of the tree branching into series and subseries containing files that, in turn, contain the records. 

  • Each record consists of fields that support different data types. 

  • Supported data types:- 

    • Short text 

    • Long text 

    • Date 

    • Date Time 

    • Integer 

    • Floating point 

    • Decimal 

    • Geolocation 

    • Binary (computer files such as PDFs and images) 

  • Field structure (schema) of each table can be user designed or generated automatically by spreadsheet import.

  • Any number of binary files can be added to any record. 

  • Binary files can be stored within the database file or attached as files on a hard drive; this could be elsewhere on the network.

  • Geolocation data with link to Google Maps. 

  • Unlimited keywords at File and record level. 

  • Any type of binary file can be attached/imported to a record.  Images, PDFs, audio and video files are displayed natively within ArchiveDb, other file types e.g. Word files, can be attached but can only be opened by their own application.

  • Natively supported binary attachment file types: 

    • PDF 

    • TIF 

    • TIFF 

    • JPEG 

    • JPG 

    • PNG 

    • GIF 

    • BMP 

    • MP3 

    • MP4 

    • WAV 

    • MPG 

    • MOV 

    • WMV 

  • The UI is divided into 3 panes that progressively “drill down” into the archive data.  The leftmost pane is a Treeview to browse the hierarchical structure of the archive with fonds, series and files displayed in a tree format.  The middle pane displays a table of records.  This table could either be the records contained in the selected file or the result of a search.  The right-hand pane is the field view of the selected record and also displays images, PDFs or other media files attached to the record. 

  • Checkboxes to include or exclude files from search. 

  • Parsing and indexing of text and dates (with inverted indices) including full text of attached PDFs and audiovisual file transcripts. 

  • Parsing identifies individual words and dates within narrative text. 

  • Audit trail (without UI) maintained server side. 

  • Security:- user login is required to edit data.  Users can be read-only, editors or administrators. 

  • Files can be protected by specifying user permissions. 

  • File permissions can be granted to types of user, individual users and groups of users. 

  • ArchiveDb provides searchable read-only view of unprotected files without a login. 

  • Structured and unstructured searching across all data. 

  • Full text and date search of all data, including full text of attached PDFs and audiovisual transcripts, facilitated by inverted indices and provided by the Quick Search. 

  • Fuzzy searching. 

  • Spreadsheet import wizard. 

  • ‘Media filer’ for the rapid import of images, PDF, multimedia and other binary files. 

  • Multimedia support with searchable timed transcripts. 

  • Support utility for generating timed transcripts from Amazon Web services and YouTube. 

  • Drag-and-drop support for media files. 

  • Ad hoc data:- additional data fields can be added to individual records out-with their table design (schema).  Allows users to add an image, other media or any other data type to a record on a one-off basis.   

  • User annotation of records 

  • Bookmarks 

 

Architecture 

ArchiveDb is a client-server database.  A Firebird relational database management system (RDBMS) resides on a computer designated to be the physical server, and any number of workstations connected to the server run the client software, which is the user interface shown in the above screen prints.  The RDBMS is also known as a database server, which can be confusing as it is a piece of software rather than physical computer.  Firebird is open source and available at no cost.  It can run on a wide range of hardware including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.  The client-side user interface is a desktop application built on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and written in C#.  It requires Windows workstations/PCs.

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