The Massachusetts Historical Commission (MHC) operates within the Secretary of State’s office to provide regulatory, archival and public information support for Massachusetts’ historic and archaeological resources. A series of data collection projects over many years have computerized detailed information previously only available by visiting the State Archives Building in Dorchester.
To help meet the state’s mandate for public information and to reduce reliance on increasingly fragile paper records, we have worked with the MHC over the years to bring data onto the Internet for public use. Having helped create the internal data collection systems, we knew that a simple search mechanism would not do. We collaborated with MHC staff to design a web site that would meet the needs of a range of users, from internal staff, to sophisticated academic researchers and preservationists, to more casual public visitors, including developers and building trades users.
With MHC staff, we designed the site to present a step-by-step structured search experience, with clean, well-defined terminology. Experienced users breeze right through, while new visitors can feel supported and guided throughout.
The site also needed to be provide fast and reliable response against a database of close to 200,000 large, complex records. We opted to build a site combining Microsoft ASP and now .Net technology with the Open Source MySQL database. Results can be viewed on screen, downloaded as lists. as individual site snapshots or converted to PDFs.
This past year we have focused on an exciting new phase of the project which will soon pass from staff-only use to public use. This latest enhancement will combine the existing search with significant spatial (mapping) information. It will integrate extensive, free GIS resources from Mass GIS http://www.mass.gov/mgis/ using Caliper Corporation’s powerful Maptitude for the Web software tools for Microsoft .Net.
While security and privacy issues need to be carefully respected throughout, the MHC has committed itself to public access to public data. Providing useful and usable data from public agency data collection to community and business users is essential to civic life and engagement today, and we have taken pride in our work with the MHC.
