Ontario has long had a motto as a province: “Yours to discover”. In many ways, the province has taken this motto as the basis for the OurOntario web portal. OurOntario is a unique partnership between a wide variety of cultural and heritage organizations, such as libraries, museums, local organizations and any other organization that could have resources to share, with no limits as to size of the organization. The ultimate goal of OurOntario is to make discoverable the incredibly rich resource available to all regardless of their physical location. Ontario's libraries, museums and other organizations have a phenomenal wealth of information. In many cases, these are unique items. In other cases, these items are ephemeral. Other resources are in danger of falling apart. The goal of OurOntario is to make these resources available electronically. This ensures that anyone can access the resources regardless of where the resources are physically held. This goal also ensures that a copy of the resource, albeit electronic, is still available when the original is no longer available.
One unique point about OurOntario is that it is not simply a portal or hosting site. In fact, they will work with any cultural or heritage organization to scan and prepare their materials for inclusion in this portal. The members of OurOntario will partner with any organization and provide free tools, hosting and user interface for digital tools. OurOntario aims to make this whole process as easy and simple as possible. They provide not only the resources, but also the experts. There are no limits to the format of materials available. The portal promotes and provides audio, video, text, government documents, and images from any organization. Some of the search results are interactive. Others are simply PDF versions of a document or book. The outstanding feature of this umbrella site is that it truly wants to make accessible the vast amount of Ontario based material regardless of format or source.
The content found in this portal reflects the wide variety of sources from which the information is drawn. There are photographs, maps, videos, sound recordings, books and any other media acquired. The digital collections included relate to Ontario life, culture, history, government, business or scientific heritage.
The ability to search for any resource is as simple or as complicated as the researcher wishes to make it. From the basic search screen, anyone can simply type in a term or combination of terms and search all resources, regardless of format. The results are listed based on relevancy with the total number of hits posted at the top of the screen. However, any researcher can then limit resources based on certain preset limits: by resource (audio, collection, image, object, text or video), contributor, geographical locations, and collections, among others. Depending on the actual results, these limiters will change. Simply click on the relevant limiter and the results are easy changed. A cloud tag also highlights main words used in the description of the contents. This is a useful limiter as it easily allows the researcher to limit by format (e.g. postcard).
Once having identified possible results of use, simply click on an entry for further information. The amount of information displayed depends on the information entered by the organization. Sometimes this information is quite extensive but in some cases, it is very scant. However, in all cases that I checked, the information was useful and appropriate. The first level of display presents basic information. Then, for further information, anyone can simply click on a Full Record tag for further information. From the main screen, one can also browse for information based on source: audio, collection, image, object, text or video. Simply clicking on the relevant icon from the right hand side of the page presents all of the information in that category. Then, one can refine the search by entering keywords within the search results or using any of the relevant limiters.
An advanced search screen allows the researcher to control the search process. The search can be as simple or as complicated as the researcher wishes. I have found that one can get the same results through a basic search and then use the filters supplied. From the main page, one can also search government documents. From a widget placed directly on the main page, one can simply type in any term to search current as well as historic Ontario government documents. Excellent information easily searched. The results are presented in the same manner as all other searches.
Also included on the main page is the ability to do a search of certain Ontario newspapers: Burlington, Halton Hills, Milton, Oakville, Peel, Cobourg, Woodstock, Grey Highlands area, Oshawa, Essex, and Nastawagan. It is not possible at this stage to search all of these databases in one search. The researcher will have to identify the area to search and then search within the specific database. Due to this, the ways of searching differ but it is still a fairly simple to search. The results tend to be indexes only. The researcher then would have to try to get a copy of the actual newspaper if possible.
Overall this is an outstanding portal that easily makes accessible a vast amount of information. It could be of use to anyone: genealogists, students at any level, and any researcher in general. An excellent portal that should be considered a basis for others.
