Transcript Library Resource Management Systems: New Challenges, New Opportunities October 8-9, 2009 WHERE CAN WE GO FROM HERE? Marshall Breeding Director for Innovative Technology and Research Vanderbilt University.

Library Resource Management Systems: New Challenges, New
Opportunities
October 8-9, 2009
WHERE CAN WE GO FROM
HERE?
Marshall Breeding
Director for Innovative Technology and Research
Vanderbilt University Library
Library Technology Guides
http://www.librarytechnology.org
FORGING A PATH THROUGH A
MAZE OF OPTIONS
Trajectory
 Changing roles of libraries and the nature of
their collections demand corresponding
changes in supporting technologies
 Enormous challenges to deliver appropriate:
 Discovery platforms
 Business automation systems
 Yet…turnover of library automation products
very slow
Library Context
 Academic libraries: increased emphasis on
enterprise interoperability
 All Libraries: Transition to larger proportions of
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non-print content
Emphasis on full-text delivery: e-journals, ebooks, digitized books
Shrinking library budgets: Cuts made in these
economic times may never be recovered
Public Libraries: operational efficiency
All libraries: higher levels of resource sharing
Technology context
 New Technology Cycle
 Cloud computing:
 Platform-as-a-service (Amazon EC2)
 Storage services (C3)
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Software-as-a-service
Delivery to mobile devices
Enterprise level infrastructure
Legacy:
 Local/departmental computing
 Client/server
 Local servers
Business and procurement cycles
General Business Trends
 Very complex market
 Local national and regional companies & Global
competitors
 Increasingly consolidated and global
 Concentration of library automation into a
smaller niche of companies
Predominance of Proprietary
ILS products
 The vast majority of libraries choose to
license proprietary ILS products from
established vendors
 Some of these companies continue to see
growth in new client libraries
 Defections to competitors and open source
currently happen at relatively low levels
 Many unannounced open source projects
may alter this trend
Dynamics of library
automation changing
 Commercial companies developing and
supporting proprietary products prevail
 Open source ILS procurements
 Non-profit OCLC cooperative positioned to
play a larger role
Technology and product
strategies
 Evolved products?
 Can the existing slate of major ILS products
morph over time to meet the ever widening gaps
between design and functionality and changing
library requirements
 Fresh starts possible?
Evolutionary path
 Unicorn -> Symphony
 INOVAQ > Innopac -> Millennium/Encore
 Urica -> Spydus
 VUBIS -> Vubis Smart -> V Smart
 ALEPH 100… ALEPH 500/Verde/SFX -> URM
Forging a fresh path
 OLE – Ready to launch 2-year build phase
 Open Source
 URM -- (New or evolved?)
 Commercially licensed open platform
 Web-scale library automation
 OCLC WorldCat Local cooperative library
management system
Research and development
activities
 Do the systems libraries really need exist yet?
 Research and Development essential to
develop systems to meet the needs of
libraries and issues identified in this Forum
 Where will this take place?
 Companies?
 Libraries?
 Vendor / Library collaboration
The Business of Open Source
ILS
 Library procurement of open source ILS
 Commercial support companies
 Small and fragmented
 Many open source implementations taking
place independent of commercial support
contracts
Open Source ILS Companies
 Exists at the lower bounds of sustainability,
with some showing significant growth.
 Fragmented approach can diffuse already
limited resources
Open source alternatives
gaining increasing support
 Many libraries energized to take on local
development projects
 Traditional vendors interested in making best
use of open source components
 The direct adoption of open source products
represents only one aspect of open source in
the library automation industry.
Support by Grant-making
bodies
 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
 Georgia Public Library Systems recognized with Award for
Technology Collaboration ($50,000)
 OLE (Open Library Environment)
 $475,700 Phase I
 ?? Phase II
 eXtensible Catalog
 $283,000 Phase I
 $749,000 Phase II
 IMLS
 “Empowered by Open Source”
 $998,556
 Led by King County + Peninsula Library System in California, the
Ann Arbor District Library in Michigan and the Orange County
Library System in Florida
A conversation about
software licensing
 Move beyond Open Source / Proprietary
software as philosophical arguments.
 SaaS largely neutralizes the pragmatic
differences
 Software choices made on the merits of
functionality
 Company choices made on the merits of their
service delivery
Discovery / Library
Business Automation
 Now viewed as separate problem
 Many interdependencies
 Current model of feeding discovery systems
from many underlying repositories
 ILS / e-journal collections / collections of digital
objects
 Will models of resource management change
to consolidate the repositories?
 Realign Discovery and management?
Discovery interface arena
 Technology platforms becoming more
mature
 Major projects and products to bring full text
article-level content within the primary
purview of the discovery interface.
 Next challenge: Full text indexes of books
New options and
opportunities springing up
 Many opportunities for libraries to contribute
 Partnerships with vendors
 Development partner / Beta test site
 Participation in open source initiatives
 Contribute to new and existing projects
 VuFind, Blacklight, OLE, Evergreen Koha
Service oriented
architecture
 Preferred technology for new development
projects
 Web Services
 Can function as the glue that ties legacy systems
together
 Building blocks of composed applications in an
SOA environment
 Legacy software will be around for a very long
time.
Issues for Standards
 Library infrastructure may be positioned for
many major shifts
 Will new models of automation be served by
existing standards and best practices?
 What will be the points of interoperability that
will require technical agreements, best practices,
standards as library automation models morph?
 Help NISO and other relevant organizations
broker technical agreements in time to drive, not
hold back, new initiatives.
 Increased library involvement will be extremely
helpful
Many paths forward…