The Future of Integrated Library Systems

1
The Future of Integrated Library Systems

• Marshall BreedingDirector for Innovative
  Technologies and Research
• Vanderbilt University
• http//staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/breeding

January 12, 2006 Pacific University
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Areas of Interest

• Business and Industry Trends
• Technology Trends

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Industry Trends

• The business is becoming more brutal
• Its important to understand the underlying
  business environment that steers the direction of
  the industry

4
From Fragmentation to Consolidation

• Sirsi Dynix DocuTek DRA NOTIS MultiLIS
  INLEX SirsiDynix ?
• Library clients captured through acquisition
• Greater disparity between the smallest and the
  largest companies

5
Who owns the Industry?

• Some of the most important decisions that affect
  the options available to libraries are made in
  the corporate board room.
• Increased control by financial interests of
  venture capital
• SirsiDynix -gt Seaport Capital Hicks Muse
• Ex Libris -gt Walden Israel Tamar Technology
• Geac -gt Golden Gate
• Polaris -gt Croydon Company

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Growth Strategies

• Assembly Acquisition
• SirsiDynix
• BiblioMondo
• Some companies continue to prosper and grow
  organically through steady sales of products to
  new libraries
• Innovative Interfaces
• The Library Corporation
• Keystone

7
Libraries demand choice.

• Room for niche players
• Domination by a large monopoly unlikely to be
  accepted by library community

8
A New Role for OCLC?

• Library-owned cooperative on a buying binge of
  automation companies
• Openly Informatics
• Fretwell-Downing Informatics
• Sisis Informationssysteme
• PICA
• Acquired a broad range of technology components
• Open WorldCat will grow into a much broader set
  of services
• Stands to effect great change in the position of
  libraries on the Web

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Key Issue

• Its essential for libraries to partner with a
  company that will be one of the survivors of the
  industry.
• Very disruptive to a librarys automation
  strategy if its vendor is acquired.
• Given the relative parity of library automation
  systems, choosing the right automation partner is
  more important than splitting hairs over
  functionality.
• Understanding of library issues
• Vision and forward-looking development

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The Future Business Environment?

• A fewer number of larger companies
• Additional Mergers and Acquisitions among ILS
  competitors still possible.
• More cross-industry ownership
• Courseware ILS?
• ERP/CRM ILS?
• Publisher ILS?

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Technology Trends
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The ILS is not dead

• Rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated
• A well-functioning automation system is essential
  to the operation of the library
• Libraries have never needed automation more than
  today

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Comprehensive Automation

• The goal of the Integrated Library Systems
  involves the automation of all aspects of the
  librarys internal operations and to provide key
  services to library users.
• We need to fill in some gaps and achieve better
  integration.
• Single point of management for each area of
  content

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Resource Sharing

• Limited budgets with ever increasing demands for
  broader services require efficient sharing of
  collections
• Opportunities to make ILL more like circulation
• Fast delivery of physical items from non-local
  collections remote storage, consortium partners,
  ILL
• Libraries need to offer resources far beyond
  their own local collections.

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Large-scale automation

• Trend toward automation through consortia and
  other consolidated library organizations
• Current hardware and software platforms support
  ever larger pools of libraries and resources.
  The number of libraries and the size of
  collections that can share a single system is
  extremely large.
• Economies of scale makes better use of computing
  components and technical personnel.
• ASP / Vendor-hosted automation
• Fewer libraries choose to maintain their own
  independent automation system.
• Modern security challenges further increase the
  cost and risk of single-library implementations.

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The ILS Crisis

• The ILS, which had been steadily evolving for
  over 2 decades reached a crisis in about 2000.
  While libraries had evolved into new roles
  involving increasing electronic content, the ILS
  remained overly fixated on print and traditional
  materials.
• We now in catch-up mode.

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Response to the Crisis

• Urgent need to better manage and deliver access
  to electronic content.
• A bevy of add-ons
• OpenURL Link Resolvers
• Metasearch environments
• Electronic Resource Management modules
• Journal content holdings data services

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High Cost of Low Integration

• Libraries forced into the role of systems
  integrator
• Each of the add-on requires a well-planned
  implementation project and ongoing system and
  data maintenance.
• Multiple implementation projects
• Academic libraries often limited to one major
  product implementation per year
• It can be a three-year process to build a
  complete system Link Server, MetaSearch, ERM

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Business motivations

• The add-on approach has as much to do with
  business opportunities as it does with technical
  design.
• Given the saturation of the ILS marketplace,
  companies need to have new products to sell.
• An interest in selling to non-ILS client
  libraries favors a stand-alone/less integrated
  approach.

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Blindsided despite Obvious Trends

• Libraries have been acquiring and creating
  electronic content since the emergence of the Web
• One of the most fundamental changes in the nature
  of libraries, yet the automation systems fell
  behind in features needed to manage and deliver
  electronic content.

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A fundamental failure

• The emergence of these non-integrated add-on
  applications stand as an indictment that the ILS
  failed to evolve in step with changes in the
  library environment.
• Libraries failed to demand adequate tools in time
  of need. Satisfied with ad-hoc solutions.
• Vendors failed to incrementally evolve their core
  products to accommodate electronic content.
• The ILS would be much different today if it
  gained these functions as native capabilities.

22
Economic considerations

• Increased complexity of library collections and
  operations require more sophisticated automation
  solutions.
• The cost of automation systems should be expected
  to increase over time.
• Large investments in electronic content naturally
  involves some investment in tools for management
  and access.
• Some trade-off between personnel costs and
  automation costs, but not always
• Library automation costs are low relative to
  other industries and business sectors.
• Libraries often increase their automation costs
  by tweaking the details of how their systems
  work.

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Path to Recovery

• More systematic approach toward hybrid
  print/electronic collections
• OpenURL-based linking widely deployed
• Metasearch stands as the current kludge for
  unifying the OPAC and ever-growing collections of
  electronic content
• Library portal options still limited and immature

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Portals

• Current development efforts focus on the
  front-end of the ILS
• Expand the Web-based OPAC into something more
  like a portal
• RSSrace to integrate RSS into the OPAC
• Enhanced content.
• Customization
• Begins to replace some components of the library
  Web site

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Opening Up the System

• ILS Vendors offering APIs to the internal
  functions of their systems
• Allows programmatic access to library data and
  system functions
• Facilitates the integration of the ILS with other
  applications
• Allows the library to extend functionality
  independently of the vendor
• Application Programming Interface works in
  conjunction with a scripting or programming
  language.

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Integration with external systems

• Libraries often need their systems to integrate
  with external non-library applications
• Business-to-business interactions procurement,
  payment, etc
• Content partners

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Web Services / SOA

• Suite of XML protocols to enable system-to-system
  interactions
• Service Oriented Architecture design of
  enterprise applications to work together within a
  framework based on Web services
• Widely deployed in other industries
• Beginning to take hold in library arena

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Strategic Integration

• Library data and services need to be expressed in
  non-library applications
• Courseware
• Student Portals
• Higher-level information environments
• WorldCat, Google, etc.
• Current mechanisms are inefficient
• EG Standard Web service for delivering holdings
  and availability based on ISBN query

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Metadata Flexibility

• ILS still bound to the MARC record
• Other metadata schemes favored for content types
  other than traditional library materials
• Better support for Dublin Core, VRA, MPEG-7,
  MPEG-21, MODS, METS
• The ILS could provide a cataloging environment
  for all types of content.

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Threats and challenges -- general

• Library users expect more than they currently
  receive.
• Google and other modern Web destinations set high
  user expectations.
• Library offerings seem clumsy, complex, and
  ineffectual.

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Threats and challenges academic

• Libraries struggle to find their place in the
  academic enterprise
• Organizationally Role in academic support and
  student life
• Virtually Challenge to be both conspicuous and
  transparent in the academic web presence
• Challenges
• be a great destination among the Web services the
  university offers its faculty and students
• To deliver library services through non-library
  interfaces campus portal, courseware, etc.