This item was published during the term of a previous administration that ended in April 2007
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Bilingual website wins top award
16/06/2005
The first fully bilingual website to highlight the
history, culture and language of the Highlands and
Islands has won the COSLA Delivering Excellence award.
Public Service Reform Minister Tom McCabe presented the
award at the Executive sponsored COSLA Excellence Awards
ceremony in Bishopbriggs. He said:
"I am happy the Executive is again associated with the
COSLA Excellence Awards and congratulate all the winning
projects. These awards allow us to celebrate particular
achievements and overall delivery of high-quality public
services to the people of Scotland.
"The winner of the Scottish Executive-sponsored
Excellence Award, the website Am Baile, has opened up the
history and culture of the Highlands and Islands to a
worldwide audience. Much of the material on the website was
hitherto unavailable due to the fragility of the historical
documents and artefacts.
"More than 40,000 items were digitised with accompanying
details translated into Gaelic by a team of dedicated staff
from the Highlands and Islands' library services. It has
proven to be a huge success, and now receives over 19,000
hits a month from users worldwide.
"It is the first project to use the Gaelic language in
this way and represent the Highlands and Islands in such a
way. It is delivering a successful, high quality public
service to the benefit of Scotland and beyond.
"This is exactly the type of innovative public service
that COSLA's Excellence Awards were created to honour. The
Executive is committed to improving the delivery of public
services in Scotland and these awards help celebrate the
kind of standards we want to see in councils across the
whole of Scotland."
Councillor Andy Anderson, Chairman of The Highland
Council's Education Culture and Sport Committee, said: "We
are thrilled with the success of the Am Baile (The Gaelic
Village) project, which provides a new learning and
research resource for everyone with an interest in the
heritage, culture and language of the Scottish Highlands
and Islands. It is worthy recognition of the skill
enthusiasm and commitment of the team and reflects the high
quality of services we are providing in Highland."
The Am Baile project was established in October 2001,
initially through a grant from the New Opportunities
Fund.
COSLA Excellence Awards are in their ninth year and it
is the fourth year that the Executive has sponsored an
award.