1. DAYS OF KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION The Future of the Library Catalog and the ILS Marshall Breeding Director for Innovative Technology and Research Vanderbilt University Library Nashville, TN USA 2 February 2008 Oslo University College

2. Issues and Questions addressed  Audience: The main target group is librarians wanting an up-date on their field of work  This year we plan to explore the (possible) future of the catalogue/ILS.  What sort of library systems do we foresee?  How can we make the front end systems work better for the end users?  Will/should the local OPACs disappear?  Should we rather put our efforts into developing good centralized services with access to all library resources?  What needs to be done in terms of developing workable backend systems? In Norway there are national plans to develop a centralized search and lending service which will give end user access to a majority of the local library catalogues. We hope our seminar will provide a good starting point for discussing the future landscape.

3. Library Technology Guides  http://www.librarytechnology.org http://www.librarytechnology.org  Repository for library automation data  Lib-web-cats tracks 38,000 libraries and the automation systems used.  Expanding to include more international scope  Announcements and developments made by companies and organizations involved in library automation technologies

4. Current ILS Products and Business Environment

5. LJ Automation System Marketplace Annual Industry report published in Library Journal:  2008: Opportunity out of turmoil  2007: An industry redefined  2006: Reshuffling the deck  2005: Gradual evolution  2004: Migration down, innovation up  2003: The competition heats up  2002: Capturing the migrating customer

6. Upheavals in the library automation arena  Industry Consolidation  Abrupt transitions for major library automation products  Increased industry control by external financial investors  Demise of the traditional OPAC  Frustration with ILS products and vendors  Open Source alternatives hit the mainstream Breeding, Marshall: Perceptions 2008 an international survey of library automation. http://www.librarytechnology.org/perceptions2008.plhttp://www.librarytechnology.org/perceptions2008.pl January 2009.

7. ILS Industry in Transition  Consolidation through mergers and acquisitions have resulted in a fewer number of players; larger companies  Uncomfortable level of product narrowing  Increased ownership by external interests  Yet: Some companies and products continue on solid ground Breeding, Marshall “Automation system marketplace 2008: Opportunity Out of Turmoil” Library Journal. April 1, 2008.

8. Product and Technology Trends  Innovation below expectations  Conventional ILS less tenable  Proliferation of products related to e- content management  New genre of discovery-layer interfaces

9. Web 2.0 / Collaborative Computing  Currently implemented ad hoc  Many libraries putting up blogs, wikis, and fostering engagement in social networking sites  Proliferation of silos with no integration or interoperability with larger library Web presence  Next Gen: Build social and collaborative features into core automation components

10. The Mandate for Openness

11. Opportunities for Openness  Open Source Software  Alternative to traditionally licensed software  Open Systems  Software that doesn’t hold data hostage  Open Access to Data and Content  OpenLibrary VS WorldCat?

12. Open Source Alternatives  Explosive interest in Open Source driven by disillusionment with current vendors and near- evangelical promotion of this software licensing model  Beginning to emerge as a practical option  TOC (Total Cost of Ownership) still roughly equal to proprietary commercial model  Still a risky strategy for libraries – traditional licensing also risky

13. Open Source ILS enters the mainstream  Earlier era of pioneering efforts to ILS shifting into one where open source alternatives fall in the mainstream  Off-the-shelf, commercially supported product available  Still a minority player, but gaining ground

14. Open Source Interest by Region  North America: strong  More purchasing by preference  Latin America: growing  Searching for low-cost options  Asia: weak  Europe: Weak to moderate  More structured procurement processes

15. Open Source ILS options  Koha  Commercial support: LibLime – North America BibLibre -- France  Evergreen  Commercial support from Equinox Software  OPALS  Commercial support from Media Flex

16. Business case for Open Source ILS  Comparative total cost of ownership  Evaluate features and functionality  Evaluate technology platform and conceptual models  Are they next-generation systems or open source version of legacy models? “Making a Business Case for Open Source ILS.” Marshall Breeding, Computers in Libraries March 2008 http://www.librarytechnology.org/ltg-displaytext.pl?RC=13134

17. Observations on Open Source ILS  Current Open Source ILS products similar in modular organization and functionality to existing systems. Evolving to achieve the same level of features and capacity present in established commercial systems.  Initial wave of Open Source ILS commitments happened mostly in the public library arena. Recent activity among academic libraries:  WALDO Consortium (Voyager > Koha)  University of Prince Edward Island (Unicorn > Evergreen)  Open Source ILS does not result in higher satisfaction  Perceptions 2008: An international survey of library automation http://www.librarytechnology.org/perceptions2008.pl http://www.librarytechnology.org/perceptions2008.pl  Do the current open source ILS products provide a new model of automation, or an open source version of what we already have?

18. Impact of Open Source ILS  Some libraries moving from traditionally licensed products to open source products with commercial support plans  Disruption of ILS industry  new pressures on incumbent vendors to deliver more innovation and to satisfy concerns for openness  New competition / More options

19. More Open Systems  Pressure for traditionally licensed products to become more open  APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) let libraries access and manipulate their data outside of delivered software  A comprehensive set of APIs potentially give libraries more flexibility and control in accessing data and services and in extending functionality than having access to the source code.  Customer access to APIs does not involve as much risk to breaking core system functions, avoids issues of version management and code forking associated with open source models.

20. A Continuum of Openness

21. Closed Systems Circulation Acquisitions Cataloging Staff Interfaces: End User Interfaces: Data Stores: Functional modules: No programmable Access to the system. Captive to the user Interfaces supplied by the developer Programmer access:

22. Standard RDBM Systems Circulation Acquisitions Cataloging Staff Interfaces: End User Interfaces: Data Stores: Functional modules: Database administrators can access data stores involved with the system: Read-only? Read/write? Developer shares database schema Programmer access:

23. Open Source Model Circulation Acquisitions Cataloging Staff Interfaces: End User Interfaces: Data Stores: Functional modules: All aspects of the system available to inspection and modification. Programmer access:

24. Open API Model Circulation Acquisitions Cataloging Staff Interfaces: End User Interfaces: Data Stores: Functional modules: Core application closed. Third party developers code against the published APIs or RDBMS tables. Programmer access: Published APIs

25. Open Source / Open API Model Circulation Acquisitions Cataloging Staff Interfaces: End User Interfaces: Data Stores: Functional modules: Core application closed. Third party developers code against the published APIs or RDBMS tables. Programmer access: Published APIs

26. Depth of Openness  Evaluate level of access to a products data stores and functional elements:  Open source vs Traditional licenses  Some traditional vendors have well established API implementations  SirsiDynix Unicorn (API available to authorized customer sites that take training program)  Ex Libris: consistent deployment of APIs in major products, recent strategic initiative: “Open Platform Program”  Innovative Interfaces: Patron API; Encore Web services

27. Next-generation Library Interfaces

28. Crowded Landscape of Information Providers on the Web  Lots of non-library Web destinations deliver content to library patrons  Google Scholar  Amazon.com  Wikipedia  Ask.com  Do Library Web sites and catalogs meet the information needs of our users?  Do they attract their interest?

29. The Competition

31. The best Library OPAC?

32. Better?

33. Demand for compelling library interfaces  Urgent need for libraries to offer interfaces their users will like to use  Move into the current millennium  Powerful search capabilities in tune with how the Web works today  Meet user expectations set by other Web destination

34. Inadequacy of ILS OPACs  Online Catalog modules provided with an ILS subject to broad criticism as failing to meet expectations of growing segments of library patrons.  Not great at delivering electronic content  Complex text-based interfaces  Relatively weak keyword search engines  Lack of good relevancy sorting  Narrow scope of content

35. Disjointed approach to information and service delivery  Silos Prevail  Books: Library OPAC (ILS module)  Articles: Aggregated content products, e-journal collections  OpenURL linking services  E-journal finding aids (Often managed by link resolver)  Local digital collections ETDs, photos, rich media collections  Metasearch engines  All searched separately

36. Change underway  Widespread dissatisfaction with most of the current OPACs. Many efforts toward next-generation catalogs and interfaces.  Movement among libraries to break out of the current mold of library catalogs and offer new interfaces better suited to the expectations of library users.  Decoupling of the front-end interface from the back- end library automation system.  Eventual redesign of the ILS to be better suited for current library collections of digital and print content

37. Scope and Concepts New Generation Discovery Interfaces:

38. More than the “library catalog”  More comprehensive information discovery environments  It’s no longer enough to provide a catalog limited to print resources  Digital resources cannot be an afterthought  Systems designed for e-content only are also problematic  Forcing users to use different interfaces depending on type of content becoming less tenable  Libraries working toward consolidated user environments that give equal footing to digital and print resources

39. Comprehensive Discovery Service  Current distributed query model of federated search model not adequate  Expanded scope of search through harvested content  Consolidated search services based on metadata and data gathered in advance (like OAI-PMH)  Problems of scale diminished  Problems of cooperation persist  Federated search currently operates as a plug-in component of next-gen interfaces.

40. Web 2.0 Flavorings  Strategic infrastructure + Web 2.0  A more social and collaborative approach  Web Tools and technology that foster collaboration  Integrated blogs, wiki, tagging, social bookmarking, user rating, user reviews  Avoid Web 2.0 information silos

41. The Ideal Scope for Next Gen Library Interfaces  Attempt to collapse silos or draw appropriately from each silo  Unified user experience  A single point of entry into all the content and services offered by the library  Print + Electronic  Local + Remote  Locally created Content  User contributed content?

42. Interface Features / User Experience  Simple point of entry  Optional advanced search  Relevancy ranked results  Facets for narrowing and navigation  Query enhancement – spell check, etc  Suggested related results / recommendation service  Enriched visual and textual content  Single Sign-on

43. Relevancy Ranking  Based on advanced search engines specifically designed for relevancy  Endeca, Lucene, FAST, BrainWare, etc  Web users expect relevancy ordered results  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.

44. New Paradigm for search and navigation  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  Ability to explore collections without a priori knowledge  Visual search tools  Navigational Bread crumbs  Select / deselect facets

45. Query / Result Enhancement  “Did you mean?” and other features to avoid “No results found”  Validated spell check / query suggestions  Automatic inclusion of authorized and related terms  More like this – recommendation service  Make the query and the response to it better than the query provided

46. Deep search  Entering post-metadata search era  Increasing opportunities to search the full contents  Google Library Print, Google Publisher, Open Content Alliance, etc.  High-quality metadata will improve search precision  Commercial search providers already offer “search inside the book” and searching across the full text of large book collections  Not currently available through library search environments  Deep search highly improved by high-quality metadata See: Systems Librarian, May 2008 “Beyond the current generation of next-generation interfaces: deeper search”

47. Beyond Discovery to Fulfillment / Delivery  Fulfillment oriented  Search -> select -> view  Delivery/Fulfillment much harder than discovery  Back-end complexity should be as seamless as possible to the user  Offer services for digital and print content

48. Current Commercial and Open Source Products New Generation Library Interfaces

49. Discovery Interface Products  Ex Libris Primo  Innovative Interfaces: Encore  Serials Solutions: Summon (under development)  Medialab Solutions: AquaBrowser  VUFind (open source)  BiblioCommons  eXtensible Catalog (under development)

50. Next generation ILS

51. Rethinking the ILS  Fundamental assumption: Print + Digital = Hybrid libraries  Traditional ILS model not adequate for hybrid libraries  Libraries currently moving toward surrounding core ILS with additional modules to handle electronic content  New discovery layer interfaces replacing or supplementing ILS OPACS  Working toward a new model of library automation  Monolithic legacy architectures replaced by fabric of SOA applications  Comprehensive Resource Management “It's Time to Break the Mold of the Original ILS” Computers in Libraries Nov/Dec 2007

52. ILS: a legacy concept?  ILS = Integrated Library System (Cataloging + Circulation + OPAC + Serials + Acquisitions)  Focused on print and physical inventory  Electronic content at the Journal Title or collection level  Emerged in the 1960’s – 1970’s  Functionality has evolved and expanded, but basic concepts and modules remain intact  Note: Some companies work toward evolving the ILS to competently handle both print and digital content (e.g. Innovative Interfaces)

53. ILS: ever diminishing role  Many libraries putting much less emphasis on ILS  Just an inventory system for physical materials  Investments in electronic content increasing  Management of e-content handled outside of the ILS  Yet: libraries need comprehensive business automation more than ever. Mandate for more efficient operations. Do more with less.

54. Dis-integration of Library Automation Functionality  ILS -- Print and Physical inventory  OpenURL Link resolver  Federated Search  Electronic Resource Management Module  Discovery layer interface

55. Is non-integrated automation sustainable?  Major burden on library personnel  Serial procurement / installation / configuration / maintenance cycles take many years to result in a comprehensive environment  Inefficient data models  Disjointed interfaces for library users  Very long cycle to gain comprehensive automation

56. Moving toward a new Generation of Library Automation  Are Legacy ILS concepts sustainable?  New automation environment based on current library realities and modern technology platforms  Equal footing for digital and print  Service oriented architecture

57. Breaking down the modules  Traditional ILS  Cataloging  Circulation  Online Catalog  Acquisitions  Serials control  Reporting  Modern approach: SOA

58. Service Oriented Architecture http://www.sun.com/products/soa/benefits.jsp

59. Legacy ILS + e-content modules Federated Search Circulation Acquisitions Cataloging Serials OpenURL Linking Electronic Resource Mgmt System Staff Interfaces: End User Interfaces: Data Stores: Functional modules:

60. SOA model for business automation  Underlying data repositories  Local or Global  Reusable business services  Composite business applications

61. SOA for library workflow processes Data Stores: Reusable Business Services Composite Applications Granular tasks:

62. Comprehensive Resource Management  Broad conceptual approach that proposes a library automation environment that spans all types of content that comprise library collections.  Traditional ILS vendors: Under development but no public announcements  Open Source projects in early phases  Projection: 2-3 years until we begin see library automation systems that follow this approach. 5-7 years for wider adoption.

63. ILS Reinvention projects  OLE Project  Funded by the Research in Information Technology program of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation  1-year project to produce the requirements for a new approach to library automation  Will embrace the service-oriented architecture  Business process modeling based on library workflows unconstrained from existing legacy software  Possible follow-on project to build and open source reference implementation  Ex Libris URM  Mentioned publically but not formally announced  Working toward new platform that better integrates print and electronic content Probably will be based on some existing products

64. Large-scale resource sharing

65. Observations  Trend toward ever larger implementations of library systems  Problems with scale-ability less of a concern than ever before  Many possible approaches  Distributed  Centralized

66. Distributed systems  Interconnected ILS systems  Union catalogs  Virtual – Z39.50, NCIP, ISO ILL  Physical: harvested and synched NCIP or Z39.50 for real-time holdings Resource sharing or consortial borrowing component

67. Large-scale centralized environments  Large-scale resource databases that provide discovery, local library automation, and cross- institutional borrowing  COBISS – Slovenia and other Balkan countries  Serves national, university, and public libraries  Increasing interest in state-wide systems in the US  Based on Open source and proprietary software  WorldCat: Global discovery system (and more)

68. Conclusion: many opportunities  Open source vs proprietary software  New models of library automation that better integrate physical and electronic content  New discovery interfaces to improve end-user experiences  Large-scale systems that enable broad based resource sharing

69. Questions and Discussion