In early 2008 we were commissioned by The Highland Council to migrate their existing Historic Environment Record (HER) systems onto our HBSMR application platform. With a local authority area the size of a small country, an important part of this work was to make the HER more accessible to Highland residents, and fellow heritage professionals, by publishing its collections online.

The Highland Council Historic Environment team (which at the time included one of our current HBSMR Consultants) had already made preparations for this by having their entire paper archive scanned and catalogued. As part of the data migration we were then able to link these files (tens of thousands of them) to the HER database records via our LibraryLink product. In turn the records and the associated images and files were then published online using the HBSMR Gateway and HBSMR-web.

The online Highland HER was launched in August 2008 and has since gone from strength to strength. The site is updated every couple of months and community groups are encouraged to submit information about their own projects. Thematic content, such as the Community Projects section of the site, featured New Additions, and a range of other resources, is created using the HBSMR Themes module.

As with our newer HBSMR-web product, based on the mojoPortal CMS, the original version of HBSMR-web used by The Highland Council has allowed them to customise many areas of the site to better suit their users. A survey of website users reported high levels of satisfaction with the resource.

Further information from Crispin Flower.