I am very excited to be able to present historical photographs from our London Room collection to the public in such a user-friendly format and in one powerful searchable database. How amazing is that! These photographs have been buried treasure in a cabinet, now they are available to all!

The Grey Highlands Public Library has digitized two local newspapers dating back to the 1880s. This wonderful resource is a goldmine for people researching local and family history. We have received comments from around the world regarding this database made available with the VITA toolkit.

To create such a database and web presence [like VITA] would have taken a great amount of time to develop internally. OurDigitalWorld not only provided a great alternative but also allowed us to remain on top of new technologies. They did this for the benefit of the user and without prompting.

Without OurDigitalWorld’s endless encouragement, support, training, and user friendly software, our project would not have been possible.

 

We are thrilled that our content exists in ODW because of the access this provides to world, but also guarantees that the data is maintained, backed-up, etc. in more places than just our own infrastructure. ODW has been able to efficiently and cost effectively complete phases of our projects that otherwise would likely not be complete. And they are terrific to work with.

 

ODW builds partnerships with academic and government document libraries. Our close link with ODW’s team has provided depth, enthusiasm, and helpful ideas and resulted in protecting government documents from disappearing and increasing them in the public view.

ODW’s tools are suitable to what libraries do and help position libraries differently in their community. They are tools for building a vision.

ODW is a godsend. VITA is easy to use and the cost allowed us to do things we could not have done otherwise. A win-win.

In the open data sphere, ODW is sharing forward-thinking conversation with great open minds.

“For the record, #ODWorg have the shoulders of a giant that we all benefit from standing on @oculdcs14”

“Knowing that such a wide variety of information for and about Ontario is being captured, and preserved (and more importantly is more available for everyone), is a critical part of developing ‘knowledge.’ Knowledge empowers in ways we may never have conceived.”

Local publisher Laurie Brett was an early adopter of the full-search newspaper site offered by ODW.

“Ontario has a very rich community newspaper tradition and it is great that there is an organization that is focusing on bringing this content forward. I have used services from OurDigitalWorld for both current and historical newspaper support, and have found them to be invaluable for opening up the heritage captured in the pages of my publication, which has chronicled the lives of the people in my community since 1895.”