ONELAN completes digital signage installation at Sheffield University

OXFORDSHIRE, England — Digital signage specialist ONELAN has installed a digital signage network at The University of Sheffield to facilitate multichannel communication.

At Sheffield University, a brand new, futuristic building named the Information Commons was opened in April 2007. The ongoing objective is to ensure the student facilities in the IC remain at the leading edge of student study, comfort and well-being. The IC has quickly become one of the most popular areas on campus, with more than 1,300 study spaces, 500 fully networked PCs and a library with more than 100,000 volumes of reference and short loan books, including the most popular and heavily used undergraduate texts.

The internal signage to the building was a crucial element of the design, and the goal was to have a flexible and robust means of delivering a media-rich building and general information point through digital signage.

However, the IC is spread over six floors, so communication required special consideration. A/V manager Ian Knowles from the University of Sheffield reviewed the range of potential solutions and selected a digital signage installation that targets all users of the building — staff, student or visitor — equally, with relevant information for all. Flash animation is used to create dynamic, eye catching displays.

When selecting a system, Knowles established that the digital signage would need to display multiple channels of content with both local and remote-control capability. It was also clear that a need for local browser-based text updates existed, and that this function would be actioned by authorized users and terminals within the six IC levels. In addition, all the new AV equipment needed to successfully network with existing infrastructure and previous installations. The system chosen comprised 18 Century NTB units from specialist U.K. digital signage manufacturer ONELAN, combined with 18 Samsung LCD monitors to provide a network of remote and locally controlled display sources.