Clients and Sectors

ABN AMRO is an international bank with their head office in Amsterdam. Based on their requirements, BSL created an easy-to-use, fast and secure global system that manages signatures and powers of attorney throughout their organisation. As a result, their Signature Registration System is unique within the banking sector, offering ABN AMRO a clear business advantage over its competitors.

The ING needed a solution to archive their vast amount of branding information, including images, PDFs and house-style templates. So we created a customized FRS Mediabank, giving designers and ING suppliers easy access to thousands of photos, illustrations, PDFs and brand information.

BSL developed the FD News, Image and Audio archive (NIA) for the Financieele Dagblad (the leading Dutch financial news daily). The NIA manages thousands of images and news articles received daily from press bureaus, as well as the text, audio and video material produced by their print, online and radio journalists.

PwC is a large, international firm in the professional services industry. BSL developed their award-winning real-time news alert service ‘Pulse’, initially using Exalead and Oracle™ technology, but recently migrated to Cognitive Search and SQL Server on Azure. Pulse was a great success and is now a global service available to all PwC employees worldwide via their web browsers, tablets or smartphones.

NBD Biblion provides many services on behalf of libraries and school media labs. BSL has developed production systems (MIPS/MOM) used by NBD, importing, managing and distributing bibliographic material, covers and PDFs. We’ve recently integrated these systems with AI services. In addition, we’ve created new versions of their literary databases (Literom and Uittrekselbank). Web services designed and developed by BSL supply covers and title content to many commercial and non-commercial websites.

Stichting Lezen promotes reading among children in the Netherlands. At their request, BSL developed the Drupal-based website leesplan.nl, where users can create teaching and academic programs to promote reading within educational institutions. In addition, users can contribute and share original learning programs, all of which can be browsed and selected based on criteria such as age group, purpose, and structure of the lessons.

Stichting Bibliotheek.nl (the central NL library service) is an organisation that is rapidly modernising Dutch library IT systems. BSL has worked on many Bibliotheek.nl projects and created several widgets based on their new White Label Web site Infrastructure. We also developed their e-books site and customer service portal using Drupal.

In 2004, BSL took over the design and development of Literatuurplein.nl, redesigning the site, database and CMS. The CMS imports title information for every book published in the Netherlands and is updated daily. Furthermore, it automatically links books and authors to literary events, tours, interviews, videos, columns and tv/radio programs. In addition, our software distributes Literatuurplein content via web services to Dutch library sites throughout the Netherlands.

BSL developed a suite of Edison applications designed for managing regional photo databases of suspects, synchronised between locations within each Police region. We also created international databases of high-resolution images used for verifying travel documents and currencies by customs organisations worldwide.

The international Van EyCK art history database & website was designed for use by European galleries, art institutes and auction houses. Van EyCK can compare images, making it possible to identify copies of works or recognise different artists’ styles. It also supports many techniques for classifying and describing artworks, using custom thesauri and the Iconclass art classification system.

BSL created a custom version of the Edison software (developed for the Dutch Police) linking images of immigrants and foreigners to existing databases used by the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Services. In addition, we created a prototype system where users can view photos alongside personal information extracted from multiple databases to improve identity verification and support the automated production of identity cards.

Teaching Dutch and British sign language to children was the primary goal of our European SignBase project. SignBase stored thousands of sign language videos, linking the videos to descriptions, keywords, synonyms, and context. In addition, the database – a world first – was used to create teaching tools such as CD/DVD games, dictionaries and other learning aids, allowing deaf children and their families to discover and learn sign language for themselves.

The NIOD has an extensive and unique collection of images – from, among others – the German occupation of the Netherlands during WWII. BSL developed the WWII Image Bank, making it easy for the NIOD to publish selections from their vast archive of images.

KITLV (the Dutch Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology) promotes the culture and history of Southeast Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean. BSL developed a custom online image archive containing their unique collection of historical photos.

The RKD (Dutch Institute for Art History), Trinity College Dublin, and the Courtauld Gallery were our partners in developing the Van EyCK European art history database.

The Courtauld Gallery in London is one of the most respected art institutes in the world. BSL helped the Courtauld and other European institutes to create a multilingual online art history database.

CRV is a Dutch-Belgian organisation responsible for improving and promoting cattle herds. They maintain comprehensive breeding records, including many photos. We created their Multimedia Bank (MMB) using our FRS software, adding many CRV-specific features, such as links to several in-house systems. The MMB is an unqualified success – a unique visual database of cattle (dairy and breeding stock) that now includes videos alongside photos.

ESTEC (European Space Research and Technology Centre) is the NASA of Europe. They asked BSL to develop a graphic database containing thousands of images, videos, and incident reports to make all their information on accidents and potential risks available online to their security and safety specialists.