Some like it hot

The McIlhenny Company--best known for its pepper sauce--has implemented advanced search and retrieval software to navigate its archives. The archives were set up in 1993 to preserve documents and artifacts relating to Avery Island, La., the interrelated Avery and McIlhenny families, and the McIlhenny Company and its famous Tabasco brand pepper sauce and other Tabasco products.

The McIlhenny Company was founded in 1868 at Avery Island, and still operates on the same site today. The archived content, which consists of more than 1,000 pages of text, includes letters, diaries and handwritten documents from the 19th and 20th centuries. Rich in American history, the eclectic mix of material ranges from the original Tabasco sauce recipe to clippings of Robert E. Lee's hair.

The McIlhenny Company chose ISYS:desktop from ISYS Search Software to enable search and retrieval across its archives.

Says Shane K. Bernard, McIlhenny Company historian and curator, "By selecting ISYS to quickly and easily search across these digital archives, we no longer spend a half-hour or more conducting basic Find functions that aren't always successful. ISYS locates the desired text in a matter of seconds, thus improving accuracy and productivity, which is why it has become an integral tool in our archives."