The AWWA enhances its internal search experience

The American Water Works Association (AWWA), a 50,000-member scientific and educational nonprofit group dedicated to managing and treating water, has added custom search to its in-house document repository.

The organization, which has used Access Innovations’ technology since 2004, recently contracted for a major update. The AWWA has upgraded to the latest version of Access Innovations’ XML Intranet System (XIS) application, including creating a search portal web application for in-house use. Traditional search options have been expanded to include additional searchable metadata, providing better and more targeted search results.

The new search portal allows AWWA staff to locate items in their collection by publisher, author, subject (thesaurus) term, ISSN or any of several other search options. The search results can be filtered to more precisely fit the desired criteria of the user.

Dan Berger, senior manager of production at AWWA, says, "It was important for our organization to make this upgrade. The increased scale of our content demanded a unique solution, and we were happy to partner with Access Innovations on it."

In creating the search portal, AWWA has enriched its internal user experience by improving findability within its corpus and has increased the speed at which users can accurately find the information they need.