THE COMPANY
Celia is a State-owned specialist library that produces and distributes literature in an accessible format for those including people with visual impairments and those with reading and learning difficulties. Celia offers its customers the facility to borrow, free of charge, talking books, books in Braille, e-books and books that combine text and sound. Every year the library produces around 30 per cent of all fiction and non-fiction that is published in Finland in an accessible format. This makes Celia the biggest producer of alternative media in Finland. Celia also produces and sells text books in an accessible format for compulsory and upper secondary schools. In total Celia has around 16,000 customers, who between them borrow one million items a year.
THE CHALLENGE
The crucial factors in the negotiation were price, geographical proximity, storage facilities, delivery guarantees and backup.
“We don’t have such large volumes, but there are many practical details that must all work,” says Minna von Zansen.
Most of Celia’s borrowers are members of a book club and automatically receive a selection delivered to their home every month. They can be anything from whodunits to historical novels or memoirs. Only around thirteen per cent of users seek out books for themselves and actively borrow online.
“We have borrowers all over Finland, but also in other countries. Actually as far away as in Australia,” explains Minna von Zansen.
Celia also produces books in other languages.
“After all, we’re bilingual in Finland, so we collaborate with the Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille. We also produce books in languages other than Swedish.”
THE SOLUTION
Celia sends out one million personalised talking books on CD every year. The talking books, which conform to the international Daisy standard, offer much better navigation options than a normal audio book.
The borrower can order books via Celia’s online service. They can also do it over the phone.
“If we have the book that the borrower’s looking for, we burn the CD the next night. If we don’t have it, it takes about two months to record it,” explains Minna von Zansen.
The CDs are collected from Celia every day. They are packed by Stralfors in special cardboard sleeves and then sent out in the post. Within the framework of the agreement, Celia has outsourced its envelope-filling machines. These are at Stralfors’ premises.
Minna von Zansen points out that this is a one-way distribution system. Borrowers do not have to return the CDs once the loan period has expired.
“Demanding the CDs be returned would take up too many resources. And recycling is an environmentally preferable alternative to one more transport operation.”
THE RESULT
Since packing was moved to Stralfors, the manual handling of CDs has been reduced.
“It means that we can use cheaper, less scratch-resistant CDs than the expensive, waxed CDs that we used to use. It’s also better for the robots that burn our CDs, as we avoid waxy deposits,” says Minna von Zansen.
“This was a totally new process for us, but after a short period of adjustment the partnership’s working very well,” explains Peter Stenvall, sales representative for Stralfors in Finland.
THE FUTURE
At Celia they have been working for a couple of years on an online solution using Daisy technology.
“The borrower has a Daisy player at home, which is directly connected to the Internet. At the moment this is a pilot project involving about 200 customers.”
But CDs won’t be disappearing for some time yet. They’ll be with us at least until 2018, believes Minna von Zansen.
“Last year we had 2,800 new customers. Most of them want to borrow CDs. Despite everything, it’s the simplest option as we have lots of older borrowers who aren’t comfortable with new technology,” she says.
In addition to the Daisy solution, Celia also offers streaming reading on the computer. But this requires a special software program, which Celia offers to its customers free of charge.