Rochester, NY City Directories

There currently is a digitization project that was brought to my attention by Jill involving city directories in Rochester, NY. This content area is of interest to me because I will working a small city dirctory digitization project at another library. I think exposure to other projects with similar content provides invaluable insight.

Before taking a look at what Rochester Public was doing, my thinking was on how to make these directories searchable in the most efficient manner possible. I think this project does at great job of providing what the user wants. Each year can be downloaded completed or in parts as a PDF file. This provides a degree of flexibility in terms of browsing vs. searching. The documents are also bookmarked to the level of "letter."

The only thing I would like to see is just a tiny bit of color or graphics on the site. It is very plain and utilitarian, which of course serves its purpose but not with any character or style.