Case Study: Swiss Library for the Blind (SBS) streamlines production and access with Alfresco

A production-archive of the latest generation – easily operated by blind- as well as by sighted people

SBS (Swiss Library for the Blind), founded in 1903, produces and lends Braille, audio, large-print and eBooks and manages a growing in-house publishing operation of some 40,000 titles. Over 25 years its electronic holdings had grown into more than ten disparate archives with inconsistent metadata and no reliable link to the ABACUS product master, forcing time-consuming manual searches and creating versioning and reproduction delays; in 2009 SBS decided to deploy a professional document management system to consolidate archives and streamline production.

Object ECM AG implemented an Alfresco-based production archive with an ABACUS interface, a web UI accessible to blind users (JAWS), workflows for filing and revisions, a migration framework for unstructured data, and full security/backup. The result is a unified production repository (now ~150,000 files / 120 GB) with full-text search and useful metadata (e.g., “date quality control”) that delivers correct versions for fast, repeatable reproduction—reducing manual effort significantly, while migration of older archives continues.

SBS

Manfred Muchenberger

Project Owner PAM and Head of the Department Mediaverlag