1. Trends in Library Automation: Meeting the challenges of a new generation of library users
Marshall Breeding Director for Innovative Technologies and Research
Vanderbilt University
November 29, 2006
OCLC Office of Research
Distinguished Seminar Series

2. Abstract
Till now, the library automation business and technology trends have evolved at a leisurely pace. Today libraries face incredible challenges as non-library 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.

3. Working toward a New Phase of Innovation
Business trends
Technology and Product trends

4. Business Trends
A look at the companies involved in library automation and related technologies

5. Business Landscape 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

6. Library Automation M&A History

7. Library automation consolidation
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

8. 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

9. Business Cycle Founder start-up
Venture capital support -> board level representation
Private equity ownership -> strategic control
IPO == mature company

10. Investor owned companies
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
formerly part of Gaylord Bros (acquired by Demco)

11. Founder / Family owned companies
VTLS – tech spin-off from Virginia Tech, wholly owned by Vinod Chachra
Innovative Interfaces
100% ownership by Jerry Kline following 2001 buy-out of partner Steve Silberstien
The Library Corporation
Owned by Annette Murphy family

12. Public companies: Auto-Graphics OpenText
De-listed from SEC reporting requirements
Was OTC:AUGR now Pink Sheets:AUGR
OpenText
Spin-off form Battelle
Information Dimensions
Acquired by OCLC, run as for-profit business unit
Sold to Gores Technology Group
Acquired by OpenText
Move involved in enterprise information management than ILS

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. Partnerships
Increasing number of partnerships with specialist companies:
Serials Solutions
TDNet
MuseGlobal
WebFeat
Openly Informatics
Medialab Solutions

17. Partnerships
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.

18. Companies more self-reliant
Innovative
Ex Libris

19. Move from Commercial ILS to Open Source
Beginning to emerge as a practical option
Koha, supported by LibLime
Evergreen, developed for Georgia PINES
Still a risky strategy for libraries

20. OCLC in the ILS arena? Library community taking notice
Library-owned cooperative on a buying binge of automation companies:
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.

21. 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

22. Product and Technology Trends

23. Current state of the Integrated Library System
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

24. Library OPAC
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.

25. State of the Library OPAC?

26. Rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated
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

27. 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.

28. 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

29. 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%
1% Online News
1% Online bookstores
0% Instant Messaging / Online Chat
OCLC. Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources
(2005) p

30. 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

31. Library Discovery Model A
Web
Library Web Site / Catalog
Library as search Destination

32. 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:
Catalog search, federated search, context-sensitive linking, etc.

33. Library Discovery Model C
Expose library content and services through non-library 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.

34. 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

35. Comprehensive Search Service
More like OAI
Wide-ranging set of local and remote information sources
Local print component will decrease over time
Problems of scale diminished
Problems of cooperation persist

36. 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.

37. Web 2.0 supporting technologies
Web services
XML APIs
AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
Microformats
OpenSearch vs SRU/SRW

38. Replacement Search Interfaces:
Endeca Guided Search
AquaBrowser Library
Are library users satisfied with
native ILS interfaces?

39. Replacement OPACs Endeca Guided Navigation AquaBrowser Library
Common thread:
Decoupled interface
Mass export of catalog data
Alternative search engine
Alternative interface

40. Expanded discovery and delivery tools
Ex Libris Primo (in development)
Encore from Innovative Interfaces (in development)
Common threads:
Decoupled interface
Comprehensive indexes that span multiple and diverse information resources
Alternative interface

41. Library-developed solutions
eXtensible Catalog
University of Rochester – River Campus Libraries
Financial support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

42. Redefinition of library catalogs and interfaces
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

43. 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.

44. Interface expectations (cont…)
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
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

45. Appropriate organizational structures
LCSH vs FAST
FRBR
Full MARC vs Dublin Core or MODS
Discipline-specific thesauri or ontologies
“tags”

46. Global vs Local 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.

47. Connecting Local Content with Global Discovery
Inbound / Outbound
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

48. Multi-layered information discovery
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.

49. Content beyond the Catalog
Local Digital Collections
Library as Publisher
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

50. 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

51. Path to improvement
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:
Vendor-to-vendor
Library / Vendor
Shared vision of the library information environment

52. Google vs libraries? Perceived as a future competitor to libraries
Some areas that overlap with libraries
Google bases its business on discovery tools
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

53. Threats and challenges
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.

54. Questions and Discussion