Since 2019, our agency has been collaborating on various projects for the Austrian National Library:
önb.digital
The flagship of digital innovation within the library sector, önb.digital serves as a unified search engine integrating all databases, enabling users to search across millions of entries.
From the inception of this portal, our agency has played a crucial role. While the library’s internal team is responsible for unifying the search engines into a SOLR database, we have been developing the user interface based on a long-term roadmap and a strategy devised in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team.
The portal expands its functionality quarterly, and we have developed the following features:
• Basic, multi-facet search
• Shareable search queries via social media
• Automated “discovery” landing page driven by thematic searches
• Favorites and list creation for customers and researchers
• Integration of “full-text search” for enhanced usability
Digital Ticket Shop
One key project for the Austrian National Library was the creation and launch of a new online ticket shop. The shop, designed and implemented by us, sells tickets for all museum branches and facilitates the booking of guided tours and events.
It is fully integrated with the library’s internal booking systems, entry control, and bookkeeping systems, automating all related processes. Additionally, yearly ticket owners can now easily manage, renew, and create digital tickets, providing convenience for thousands of customers.
Upload Platform
As mandated by Austrian law, the ÖNB collects all publications published in Austria. To streamline this, we developed a comprehensive upload tool where registered users can submit their PDF or EPUB publications along with extensive metadata. This system allows automatic import into the library’s databases, simplifying the process for publishers and significantly reducing the workload for library staff.
Newspapers Archive
Beyond the above tasks, we also completed a light relaunch and skinning of the library’s newspaper and juridical document archives (https://anno.onb.ac.at and https://alex.onb.ac.at). These archives, which hold millions of searchable entries, were redesigned using Drupal to align with the library’s overall IT infrastructure.
