Estimatein 1 hourEstimate a projectreply within 1 hourLarge and complex site for the Arkhangelsk Regional Scientific Library named after N.A. Dobrolyubov – the biggest library in the Arkhangelsk Region, taking
The Arkhangelsk Regional Scientific Library named after N.A. Dobrolyubov is the region’s largest institution since 1833, with twenty-plus departments in an 8,000 m² building and a steady flow of news, events and digital collections. The site had to let each department edit its branch while visitors get one entry point to the collection and cultural program.
Off-the-shelf CMS products could not model “department = content branch with its own permissions” without heavy customization. The scope also included catalog and booking integration, a virtual reference desk, online membership renewal, a GOST-aligned low-vision mode and mobile layout for younger readers.
We chose Yii2 and designed contextual RBAC: an editor sees only their tree node, a moderator approves publications, leadership controls the whole site. Material design kept the dense information architecture readable.
PHP and Yii2 backend powers content, calendar, IRBIS integration and the reader cabinet; the front end uses HTML5/CSS3 material cards with graceful degradation. Hybrid RBAC logs editor actions and blocks foreign branches with clear feedback.
Closed beta with ten departments yielded dozens of UX fixes — from the news form to admin hints. Migration of 3,000+ archive posts from the old site ran via scripts with no downtime for readers.
Work stayed in close contact with library staff: prototypes, layout, backend modules and catalog integration shipped in phases; aonb.ru launched without interrupting in-building service or reading rooms during archive migration.
For several years aonb.ru has been the library’s main digital window: departments publish daily on their own, visitors reserve books via IRBIS, renew cards and follow events and virtual exhibitions from phone or desktop without calling the desk or waiting on IT for content edits.
Section-scoped RBAC cuts accidental cross-department edits and speeds news, events and research publishing. GOST-aligned low-vision mode and the online catalog broaden access for readers and rare-book researchers across the collection without a building visit.
Peak traffic during Library Night and city campaigns runs without outages — Yii2 architecture showed a public institution can match commercial portal UX and keep department autonomy, as we apply in other ESK public-sector builds.
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