Philadelphia, PA -- 5/8/2008 -- Avencia
Incorporated, an award-winning, Philadelphia-based geographic analysis
and software development company has developed an innovative and unique
web-based digital asset management (DAM) software for georeferencing,
managing, searching, and displaying an organization’s digital assets
from and for any location in the world. The company announces a new
version of Sajara that is able to support digital maps which, like
other assets supported by the system, can be searched and retrieved by
enabling users to type an address, street intersection or
neighborhood. The new version of Sajara also incorporates OpenLayers
and Ext JS, both open source JavaScript libraries, to enhance its
mapping capabilities and enable support of a broad range of web mapping
engines.
The difficulty in searching and retrieving scanned maps
in any Digital Asset Management tool arises from the fact that such
assets are not based on point locations. While a photo can be found at
a particular address, a map covers a geographical area rather than a
single location per se. Sajara stores both the extent of the scanned
map (a.k.a. asset) and its center point. As a user performs a search
at an address or neighborhood, the new system uses the scanned maps’
extents to determine if they intersect with the search window. Sajara
then places a visual marker for each scanned map’s center point,
indicating to the user that assets are available in the search window.
If an asset’s center point is not within the search window, it appears
at the edge of the search window in order to suggest its peripheral
location. This enables assets to be returned in search results even if
only a portion of the scanned map intersects the search window.
The
digital maps in Sajara are fully searchable using the same criteria
available for other assets -- address, keyword, time, topic,
neighborhood, and map navigation. For increased efficiency and
ease-of-use, each search returns both point-based results such as
photographs, videos or documents and map results on separate tabs.
The
enhanced user experience in the new version of Sajara is also made
possible through the use of OpenLayers and Ext JS. OpenLayers is an
open source software toolkit that enables 'slippy maps' to be embedded
in any web application and allows communication with most
standards-complaint web map services such as ESRI’s ArcIMS, ArcGIS
Server, and GeoServer, as well as other sources such as GoogleMaps,
YahooMaps, and Microsoft Virtual Earth. A second open source
framework, Ext JS, offers customizable website pieces known as widgets
that allow for greater ease in website design. The result for users is
a more streamlined system with robust search capabilities, and
potential for a variety of future functions.
“Sajara is
evolving every single month. Users are our best focus group. Thanks
to their ongoing feedback we have been able to continuously improve the
software, implement new features, and create stronger search
capabilities. The strength of Avencia’s business model is that we both
build custom software and create targeted solutions like Sajara, so our
clients are constantly generating new ideas that can be incorporated
into our software” – Rachel Cheetham-Richard, Vice President, Avencia.
Sajara
is ideal for organizations, businesses, and agencies maintaining
extensive asset collections that need to be searched geographically by
the public or staff members located anywhere in the world. Such
organizations include: archives, museums, heritage tourism
organizations, historical societies, municipalities, real estate
companies, environmental agencies, and the restaurant/ tourism
industry.
The system can be fully customized and skinned to
reflect the brand of each organization. One Sajara implementation is at
the Philadelphia Department of Records (DoR) PhillyHistory.org (
www.phillyhistory.org),
which has enabled the public to access tens of thousands of historic
photos that had been essentially inaccessible and unsearchable for
decades. Today, PhillyHistory.org houses more than 75,000 of the
estimated 2 million photos at the Philadelphia City Archives, and, with
this latest release, now includes more than 5,000 historical maps.
About Avencia
Avencia is an award-winning, Philadelphia-based geographic analysis and software development firm specializing in the creation of innovative location-based software tools to enhance decision-making processes. Avencia believes these location-based technologies can help promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant communities. For more information, visit
http://www.avencia.com - For more information about Sajara, visit
http://www.avencia.com/Products.aspx or contact Rachel Cheetham-Richard at 215-701-7502 or
rcr@avencia.com.
“I
am impressed by the continual upgrades to your site! Each month I am
noticing new features, a smoother interface, and seemingly quicker
response time.” – PhillyHistory.org user