The Current State and Future
Directions of Library
Automation
Marshall Breeding
Director for Innovative Technologies and Research
Vanderbilt University
http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/breeding
http://www.librarytechnology.org/
MLNC Speakers Series
Missouri Library Network Corporation
Kansas City, MO
February 21, 2008
Summary
• Libraries today find themselves facing many challenges
in the way that they deliver content and services to their
users. Relative to the pace of change on the Web, the
automation products available to libraries have evolved
rather slowly. Much more rapid change is in order.
Breeding will review the current state of the library
automation arena and suggest some of the possible
strategies for achieving a new generation of library
automation products more in tune with current and
future challenges. These strategies include a reworking
the basic models of library automation systems, working
toward more open systems, and engendering more
effective partnerships with vendors.
The Current Mold
Technology Landscape
• Most ILS products from commercial
vendors mature
– None less than a decade old
– Approaching end of life cycle?
• Evolved systems
• No success in launching new systems in
the commercial sphere
– Horizon 8.0
– Taos
Current Vintage
• ALEPH 500
• Voyager
• Unicorn
• Polaris
• Virtua
• Koha
• Library.Solution
• Evergreen
• Talis
1996
1995
1982
1997
1995
1999
1997
2004
1992
Business Landscape
• Library Journal Automated System Marketplace:
– An Industry redefined (April 1, 2007)
• An increasingly consolidated industry
• Moving out of a previous phase of fragmentation where many
companies expend energies producing decreasingly differentiated
systems in a limited marketplace
• Private Equity playing a stronger role then ever before
• Narrowing of product options
– Chopping block: Horizon 8.0, Horizon 7.x, Accent, Winnebago, Athena,
InfoCenre
• Increasing dissatisfaction with purely commercial, closed source
options
• Open Source opportunities rise to challenge the grip of traditional
commercial model
Industry Health 2008
• Mixed growth in Personnel counts:
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Ex Libris +6%
Innovative + 5%
SirsiDynix -28%
Library Corporation -10%
• ILS sales represent smaller portion of revenue
• Many smaller libraries purchasing automation
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systems
Very few large library ILS procurements
Library Automation History
Other Business Observations
• Level of innovation falls below expectations,
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despite deep resources and large development
teams.
Companies struggle to keep up with ILS
enhancements and R&D for new innovations.
Pressure within companies to reduce costs,
increase revenue
Pressure from libraries for more innovative
products
Some companies investing in technology;
expanding markets
ILS Migration Trends
• Can’t expect rapid changes through a new
generation of ILS
• Few voluntary lateral migrations
• Forced Migrations
– Vendor abandonment
– Need to move from legacy systems
– Exit from bad marriages with vendors
– Exit from bad marriages with consortia
Role of the ILS in Library
Automation Strategies
• It’s never been harder to justify
investments in ILS
• Need for products focused on electronic
content and user experience
– Next-gen interfaces
– Federated search
– Linking
– Electronic Resource Management
A new direction in library
automation
• A successful pitch for new automation
software is one that enables significant
transformation toward current visions of
the library.
• Can’t keep doing the same thing in
the same way
An age of less integrated
systems
• Increasingly dis-integrated environment
• Core ILS supplemented by:
– OpenURL Link Resolvers
– Metasearch / Federated Search
– Electronic Resource Management
– Next Generation Library Interfaces
No longer an ILS-centric
industry
• Portion of revenues derived from core ILS
products diminishing relative to other
library tech products
• Many companies and organizations that
don’t offer an ILS are involved in library
automation:
– OCLC
– Cambridge Information Group / Bowker
• Serials Solutions – Syndetic Solutions –
AquaBrowser, etc
• WebFeat
Open Source Alternatives
• Explosive interest in Open Source driven
by disillusionment with current vendors
• Beginning to emerge as a practical option
• TOC (Total Cost of Ownership) still roughly
equal to proprietary commercial model
• Open Source still a risky Alternative
• Commercial/Proprietary options also a risk
Open Source Initiatives
• Multiple projects to develop Open Source ILS
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Koha Zoom
Evergreen
OPALS-NA (K-12 Schools)
Delft Libraries
• Multiple projects to develop Open Source Nextgen Catalogs
– VUfind (Villanova University)
– C4 prototype (University of Rochester River Campus
Libraries)
Market share / Perspective
• Open Source ILS implementations still a very
•
•
small percentage of the total picture
Initial set of successful implementations will
likely serve as a catalyst to pave the way for
others
Successful implementations in wider range of
libraries:
– State-wide consortium (Evergreen)
– Multi-site public library systems (Koha)
– School district consortia (OPALS-NA)
Open Source Companies
• Index Data
– Founded 1994; No ILS; A variety of other open source products
to support libraries: search engines, federated search, Z39.50
toolkit, etc
• LibLime
– Founded 2005. Provides development and support services for
Koha ILS. Acquired original developers of Koha in Feb 2007.
• Equinox.
– Founded Feb 2007; staff formerly associated with GPLS Pines
development team
• Care Affiliates
– Founded June 2007; headed by industry veteran Carl Grant.
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
• Soliciting a proposal for the design of an
Open Source ILS for higher education
• Led by Duke University
– Early stages. Proposal in development
Impact of Open Source
• Formidable competition to commercial
closed-source products
• Pressure to increase innovation
• Pressure to decrease costs
• Pressure to make commercial systems
more open
• Disrupts the status quo
Open source ILS Benchmarks
• Most decisions to adopt Open Source ILS based on
•
philosophical reasons
Open Source ILS will enter the main stream once its
products begin to win through objective procurement
processes
– Hold open source ILS to the same standards as the commercial
products
– Hold the open source ILS companies to the same standards:
• Adequate customer support ratios, financial stability, service level
agreements, etc.
• Well-document total cost of ownership statements that
•
can be compared to other vendor price quotes
Do the Open Source ILS products offer a new vision?
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 the Open Archives Initiative
model
– Harvest metadata in advance
• Problems of scale diminished
• Problems of cooperation persist
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 supporting
technologies
• Web services
• XML APIs
• OpenSearch vs SRU/SRW
Redefinition of library catalogs
• Traditional notions of the library catalog are
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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
• Millennial gen library users are well acclimated
•
to the Web and like it.
Used to relevancy ranking
– 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…)
• Very rapid response. Users have a low tolerance for slow
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•
systems
Rich visual information: book jacket images, rating
scores, etc.
Let users drill down through the result set incrementally
narrowing the field
Faceted Browsing
– 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
– Faceted Approach to Subject Terminology
• Full MARC vs Dublin Core or MODS
• Discipline-specific thesauri or ontologies
• “tags”
Current Next-Gen catalog
products
Common characteristics
• Decoupled interface
Mass export of catalog data
Alternative search engine
Alternative interface
Endeca Guided Navigation
• North Carolina State University
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/
• McMaster University
http://libcat.mcmaster.ca/
• Phoenix Public Library
http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/
• Florida Center for Library Automation
http://catalog.fcla.edu/ux.jsp
AquaBrowser Library
• Queens Borough Public Library
– http://aqua.queenslibrary.org/
Ex Libris Primo
• Vanderbilt University
http://alphasearch.library.vanderbilt.edu
• University of Minnesota
http://prime2.oit.umn.edu:1701/primo_library/li
bweb/action/search.do?vid=TWINCITIES
• University of Iowa
http://smartsearch.uiowa.edu/
Encore from Innovative
Interfaces
• Nashville Public Library
http://nplencore.library.nashville.org/iii/encore/app
• Scottsdale Public Library
http://encore.scottsdaleaz.gov/iii/encore/app
• Yale University Lillian Goldman Law
Library
http://encore.law.yale.edu/iii/encore/app
VUFind – Villanova
University
Based on Apache Solr search toolkit
http://www.vufind.org/
OCLC Worldcat Local
• OCLC Worldcat customized for local
library catalog
– Relies on hooks into ILS for local
services
• Washington University Libraries
http://uwashington.worldcat.org/
• University of California Melvyl
Catalog
Library-developed solutions
• eXtensible Catalog
• University of Rochester – River Campus
Libraries
• Financial support from the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation
• http://www.extensiblecatalog.info/
Working toward a new ILS Vision
• How libraries work has changed dramatically
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over the last 20 years.
ILS built largely on workflows cast more than 25
years ago
Based on assumptions that have long since
changed
Digital resources represent at least half of most
academic libraries collection budgets
The automation needs of libraries today is
broader than that provided by the legacy ILS
Libraries ready for a new course
• Level of dissatisfaction with the current slate of ILS
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•
products is very high.
Large monolithic systems are unwieldy—very complex to
install, administer and maintain.
Continue to be large gaps in functionality
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Interlibrary loan
Collection development
Preservation: print / digital
Book binding
Remote storage operations
Less Proprietary / More Open
• Libraries demand more openness
• Open source movement greatest challenge to
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current slate of commercial ILS products
Demand for open access to data
– API’s essential
– Beyond proprietary APIs
– Ideal: Industry-standard set of API’s implemented by
all systems
– Current NISO effort to define API for an ILS for
decoupled catalogs
– DLF-sponsored initiative
Open but Commercial?
• As library values evolve toward open solutions,
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commercial companies will see increasing
advantages in adopting more open strategies
Open Data
– Well documented database schemas
– APIs for access to all system functionality
• More customizability; better integration
• Open Source Software?
• Key differentiation lies in service and support
Comprehensive automation
• Need the ability to automation all aspects of
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library work
Suite of interoperable modules
Single point of management for each category
of information
Not necessarily through a single monolithic
system
More lightweight approach
• More elegant and efficient
• Easier to install and administer
• Automation systems that can be operated with
fewer number of technical staff
Redefining the borders
• Many artificial distinctions prevail in the legacy
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ILS model
Online catalog / library portal / institutional
portal
Circulation / ILL / Direct consortial borrowing /
remote storage
Collection Development / Acquisitions / budget
administration
• Library acquisitions / Institutional ERP
• Cataloging / Metadata document ingestion for
digital collections
Separation of front-end from backend
• ILS OPAC not necessarily best library interface
• Many efforts already underway to offer
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alternatives
Too many of the resources that belong in the
interface are out of the ILS scope
Technology cycles faster for front-end than for
back-end processes.
Service-oriented Architecture
• Work toward a service-oriented business
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•
application
Suite of light-weight applications
Flexibility to evolve in step with changes in
library services and practices
Enterprise interoperability
• Interoperate with non-library applications
• Course management
• Accounting, finance, ERM applications
• External authentication services
• Other portal implementations
Massively consolidated
implementations
• State/Province-wide ILS implementations
• Increased reliance on consortia
• Increased Software as a Service / ASP
options hosted by vendors
• Radical simplification of library policies
affecting services offered to patrons
Fitting into the Global Enterprise
• Leverage capabilities of search engines:
– Google, Google Scholar, Microsoft Live, Ask,
etc
• OCLC WorldCat
• Sort out the relationships between the
global enterprise and local systems
• Leverage the content in enterprise
discovery systems to drive users toward
library resources
Revise assumptions regarding
Metadata
• Reliance on MARC widely questioned
• XML widely deployed
• The next-gen ILS must natively support many flavors of
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•
metadata: MARC, Dublin Core, Onix, METS, etc
Library of Congress Subject Headings vs FAST
Approaching a post-metadata where discovery systems
operate on actual digital objects themselves, not
metadata about them
– High-quality metadata will always improve discovery
• Incorporate content from mass digitization efforts
• Increasing proportions of rich media content: audio,
video
Competing in an crowded field of
information providers
• Commercial Web destinations increasingly
overlap with services offered by libraries
• Expectations of users set by their
experiences with commercial destinations
• Web-based library services need to be on
the same level
• Pressure to revamp library interfaces,
discovery, and delivery tools
New models of Software
Development
• Role of commercial partners
– Break out of marketing / consumer model
– Substantial dialog that shapes the direction of
product development
• Increased partnerships
• Accelerated development cycles
• Cost-effective / realistic cost expectations
Evolution vs Revolution
• What we have today is a result of 35 years
of evolution
• Is it possible to break free of the
constraints of these evolved systems
toward a new generation that will offer a
fresh approach?
• Are libraries now willing to let go of the of
ILS legacy of times past and move forward
with library automation cast in a new
A unique opportunity
• Web 2.0 has invigorated libraries toward more
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open and collaborative strategies
Service Oriented Architecture provides a
platform for assembling library systems more in
tune with the needs of today’s libraries
Intense interest by both libraries and vendors to
catch up and move forward in delivering library
interfaces that work better for today’s Websavvy users