Preserving Institutional Heritage with Scotch Oakburn College
Scotch Oakburn College engaged C9 to design, build, and extend a digital timeline platform that showcased the College’s history across major milestones, including its anniversary celebrations and commemorative war service records. The solution provided an interactive, easily managed website that preserved institutional heritage while enabling ongoing content expansion through an integrated administration system.
Key Functionality
- Interactive Timeline Navigation: Year-based and event-based drill-down navigation providing seamless exploration of historical milestones.
- Archival Media Handling: Lightbox image viewing for historical photographs coupled with copyright and casual download protection measures.
- Search & Discovery: Built-in search functionality allowing users to query records by name and year.
- Inclusive Content Presentation: Structured layouts ensuring a gender-balanced presentation of historical content.
- Commemorative Extensions: Dedicated modules supporting extensive war service records (1914–1919) featuring individual service member profile pages and multi-image support.
- User Sharing & Navigation: URL-based integration and student-friendly navigation links, including "Send to a friend" capabilities.
Core Technologies & Architecture
- Hosting & Core Platform: Custom website running on Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server.
- CMS & Module Integration: A bespoke timeline module integrated directly into the administrative content management system.
- Frontend Layer: Lightweight frontend interactions providing smooth, responsive timeline navigation.
- Administration Interface: Custom-designed management tools tailored specifically for non-technical internal staff.
Project Outcomes & Impact
The digital heritage platform successfully enabled Scotch Oakburn College to preserve and present its rich institutional history in an engaging, interactive format. By combining intuitive timeline navigation, dedicated commemorative war service extensions, and a user-friendly CMS architecture, the solution empowered internal staff to maintain archival collections effortlessly while fostering deeper community engagement across students and alumni.