Trends in Library Automation:
Meeting the challenges of a
new generation of library users
Marshall Breeding
Director for Innovative Technologies and Research
Vanderbilt University
http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/breeding
http://www.librarytechnology.org/
November 29, 2006
OCLC Office of Research
Distinguished Seminar Series
Abstract
Till now, the library automation business and
technology trends have evolved at a leisurely pace.
Today libraries face incredible challenges as nonlibrary entities encroach into traditional library
territory. Library users are more Web savvy than
ever and have high expectations for information
providers. We are in a time of urgent need to make
rapid advances in library automation.
Working toward a New Phase of
Innovation
Business
trends
Technology and Product trends
Business Trends
A look at the companies involved in library
automation and related technologies
Business Landscape
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Becoming less fragmented as companies
consolidate
Still, a large number of companies compete in
a very limited economy with undifferentiated
and overlapping products
Many companies expend energies producing
decreasingly differentiated systems.
Level of innovation falls below expectations
Companies struggle to keep up with ILS
enhancements and R&D for new innovations.
Pressure to reduce costs, increase revenue
Library Automation M&A History
Library automation consolidation
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More libraries banding together to share
automation environment
Reduce overhead for maintaining systems that
have decreasing strategic importance
Need to focus technical talent on activities that
have more of an impact on the mission of the
library
Pooled resources for technical processing
Single library ILS implementations becoming
less defensible
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
private equity and venture capital firms

Business Cycle
Founder start-up
 Venture capital support -> board level
representation
 Private equity ownership -> strategic
control
 IPO == mature company
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Investor owned companies
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SirsiDynix -> Seaport Capital + Hicks Muse
Ex Libris -> Francisco Partners (recently
bought out VC’s)
Endeavor -> Francisco Partners (recently
bought out Elsevier)
Infor (was Extensity, was Geac) -> Golden
Gate
Polaris -> Croydon Company
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formerly part of Gaylord Bros (acquired by Demco)
Founder / Family owned companies
VTLS – tech spin-off from Virginia Tech,
wholly owned by Vinod Chachra
 Innovative Interfaces
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100% ownership by Jerry Kline following
2001 buy-out of partner Steve Silberstien
The Library Corporation
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Owned by Annette Murphy family
Public companies:
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Auto-Graphics
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De-listed from SEC reporting requirements
Was OTC:AUGR now Pink Sheets:AUGR
OpenText
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Spin-off form Battelle
Information Dimensions
Acquired by OCLC, run as for-profit business unit
Sold to Gores Technology Group
Acquired by OpenText
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Move involved in enterprise information management than
ILS
Diverse Business Activities

Many ways to expand business in ways
that leverage library automation
expertise:
Non-ILS software
 Retrospective conversion services
 RFID or AMH
 Network Consulting Services
 Content products
 Imaging services
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Libraries Demand choice.
Consolidation working toward monopoly?
 Many companies currently prosper in the
library automation industry
 Room for niche players
 Domination by a large monopoly unlikely
to be accepted by library community
 Monopoly would be subverted by Open
Source or other cooperative movement

Partnership strategies
ILS companies partner with other
companies for technologies.
 Development resource are not abundant,
even in the companies with massive
capital support
 No library automation company can take
on all aspects of development
 Tough decisions on what to build vs buy
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Partnerships
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Increasing number of partnerships with
specialist companies:
Serials Solutions
 TDNet
 MuseGlobal
 WebFeat
 Openly Informatics
 Medialab Solutions
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Partnerships
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What is different now is that ILS companies have
outsourced strategic products to outside firms
Endeavor: Dropped ENCompass and LinkFinderPlus
for TDNet
SirsiDynix: Dropped local development of ERM and
other partnerships for linking and federated search for
partnership with Serials Solution
SirsiDynix: outsourced relationship with StarSoft
Development Labs in Russia for development of
Horizon 8.0
Outsourcing strategic development raises concern for
long-term prospects of the companies. Short-term
advantage.
Companies more self-reliant
Innovative
 Ex Libris
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Move from Commercial ILS to Open
Source
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Beginning to emerge as a practical
option
Koha, supported by LibLime
 Evergreen, developed for Georgia PINES
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Still a risky strategy for libraries
OCLC in the ILS arena?
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Library community taking notice
Library-owned cooperative on a buying binge of
automation companies:
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Openly Informatics
Fretwell-Downing Informatics
Sisis Informationssysteme
PICA
DiMeMa (CONTENTdm)
Acquired a broad range of technology components
ILS companies concerned about competing with a
non-profit with enormous resources and the ability to
shift costs.
Key Business Perspective

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
 It’s
important to choose a company
that will survive
Product and Technology Trends
Current state of the Integrated
Library System
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The core ILS focused mostly on print resources
and traditional library workflow processes.
Add-ons available for dealing with electronic
content:
 Link resolvers
 Metasearch environments
 Electronic Resource Management
A loosely integrated environment
Labor-intensive implementation and maintenance
Most are “must have” products for academic
libraries with significant collections of e-content
Library OPAC
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Evolved from card catalogs and continues to
be bound by the constraints of that legacy.
 Complex and rich in features
 Interfaces often do not compare favorably with
alternatives available on the Web
 Print materials becoming a smaller component
of the library’s overall collections.
State of the Library OPAC?
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
Comprehensive Automation
The
goal of the Integrated
Library Systems involves the
automation of all aspects of
the library’s internal
operations and to provide key
services to library users.
Traditional Library Search Model
 Provide
a full featured OPAC
 Give the user a screen full of search
options
 Assume that researchers will begin
with library resources
 Reliance on Bibliographic Instruction
Troubling statistic
Where do you typically begin your
search for information on a
particular topic?
College Students Response:
 89%Search engines (Google 62%)
 2% Library Web Site (total respondents -> 1%)
 2% Online Database
 1% E-mail
 1% Online News
 1% Online bookstores
 0% Instant Messaging / Online Chat
OCLC. Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources
(2005) p. 1-17.
New Library Search Model
Don’t count on users beginning their research
with library catalogs or Web site
 Consider the library’s Web site as a
destination
 Make it a compelling and attractive destination
that uses will want to explore more.
 Web users have a low tolerance for ineffective
and clunky interfaces
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Library Discovery
Model A
Web
Library Web Site / Catalog
Library as search Destination
Library Discovery Model B
Do not give up on library search
technologies!
 Libraries must also build their own
discovery, search, and access services
 Effective, elegant, powerful
 Once users discover your library, give
them outstanding services:
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Catalog search, federated search, contextsensitive linking, etc.
Library Discovery Model C
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Expose library content and services through nonlibrary interfaces
 Campus portals, courseware systems, e-learning
environments
 County and municipal portals and e-government
 Other external content aggregators: RSS, etc
 Web services is the essential enabling technology for
the delivery of library content and services to external
applications.
 Library community lags years behind other IT
industries in adoption of SOA and Web services.
Working toward next generation
library interfaces
Redefinition of the library catalog
 More comprehensive information
discovery environments
 Better information delivery tools
 More powerful search capabilities
 More elegant presentation

Comprehensive Search Service
More like OAI
 Wide-ranging set of local and remote
information sources
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Local print component will decrease over
time
Problems of scale diminished
 Problems of cooperation persist
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Web 2.0 a good start
A more social and collaborative
approach
 Web Tools and technology that foster
collaboration
 Blogs, wiki, blogs, tagging, social
bookmarking, user rating, user reviews
 Web 2.0 technologies at the “Peak of
Inflated Expectations “ phase of the hype
cycle.
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Web 2.0 supporting technologies
Web services
 XML APIs
 AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and
XML)
 Microformats
 OpenSearch vs SRU/SRW
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Replacement Search Interfaces:
Endeca Guided Search
 AquaBrowser Library
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Are library users satisfied with
native ILS interfaces?
Replacement OPACs
Endeca Guided Navigation
 AquaBrowser Library
 Common thread:
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Decoupled interface
 Mass export of catalog data
 Alternative search engine
 Alternative interface
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Expanded discovery and delivery
tools
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Ex Libris Primo (in development)
 Encore from Innovative Interfaces (in
development)
 Common threads:
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Decoupled interface
Comprehensive indexes that span multiple and
diverse information resources
Alternative interface
Library-developed solutions
eXtensible Catalog
 University of Rochester – River Campus
Libraries
 Financial support from the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation
 http://www.extensiblecatalog.info/
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Redefinition of library catalogs
and interfaces
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Traditional notions of the library catalog are
being questioned
It’s no longer enough to provide a catalog
limited to print resources
Digital resources cannot be an afterthought
Forcing users to use different interfaces
depending on type of content becoming less
tenable
Libraries working toward consolidated search
environments that give equal footing to digital
and print resources
Interface expectations
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Millennial gen library users are well acclimated
to the Web and like it.
 Used to relevancy ranking
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The “good stuff” should be listed first
Users tend not to delve deep into a result list
Good relevancy requires a sophisticated approach,
including objective matching criteria supplemented
by popularity and relatedness factors.
Interface expectations (cont…)
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Very rapid response. Users have a low tolerance for
slow systems
Rich visual information: book jacket images, rating
scores, etc.
Let users drill down through the result set
incrementally narrowing the field
Faceted Browsing
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Drill-down vs up-front Boolean or “Advanced Search”
gives the users clues about the number of hits in each sub
topic.
Navigational Bread crumbs
Ratings and rankings
Appropriate organizational
structures
LCSH vs FAST
 FRBR
 Full MARC vs Dublin Core or MODS
 Discipline-specific thesauri or ontologies
 “tags”
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Global vs Local
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How do library collections relate to the global
realm
Will mass digitization replace local library
collections?
The global arena excels at discovery
The local arena focuses on content delivery
All the global content discovery tools point to
locally managed content.
Connecting Local Content with
Global Discovery
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Inbound / Outbound
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Move or expose metadata as needed
Provide mechanisms to link or deliver resources to users
OAI-PMH
SRU/SRW
Z39.50
Microformats
XML SiteMap Protocol
Web Services
UDDI, WDSL, SOAP,
OpenUR and other deep-linking protocols
Multi-layered information
discovery
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Global : Google
Institutional / Regional : Primo
Granular: Individual catalogs and repositories
Broad -> Precise
Offer both the ability to “find a few good things” and to
“find exactly the right things (and all of them)”
Appropriate avenues for both the undergraduate
learner and the serious scholar.
Content beyond the Catalog
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Local Digital Collections
 Library as Publisher
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No longer just the role of a University Press
Many e-journals published by libraries
ETDs
 Institutional Repositories
 Non-MARC metadata: Dublin Core, MODS,
METS, MPEG21
 Transportable Metadata: OAI-PMH
Problems with current slate of
automation components
Very loosely coupled
 Diverse interfaces
 Not seamless to library users
 Multiple points of management for library
staff
 Long and complex cycles of
implementation and integration
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Path to improvement
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Next generation systems: competing visions and
models for what will best serve libraries in the next
decade.
More systematic approach toward hybrid
print/electronic collections
More tightly coupled systems
Appropriate use of Open Source software
Greater adoption of Web Services
More collaboration in development:
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Vendor-to-vendor
Library / Vendor
Shared vision of the library information environment
Google vs libraries?
Perceived as a future competitor to
libraries
 Some areas that overlap with libraries
 Google bases its business on discovery
tools
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Most of its revenues come from adds
Libraries specialize in delivery
 Libraries can leverage global discovery
tools to enhance local delivery of content
and services
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Threats and challenges
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Library users expect more than they currently
receive.
 Google and other modern Web destinations
set high user expectations
 Urgent need to develop library interfaces that
will be compelling to a new generation of Web
savvy users
 Failure to innovate will result in a diminished
role for libraries as the next phase of digital
information evolves.
Questions and Discussion