The Future of Integrated

Library Systems

Yunus Abdul Halim

Areas of Interest

Business and Industry Trends

Technology Trends

Industry Trends

The business is becoming more brutal…

It’s important to understand the underlying business

environment that steers the direction of the industry

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

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 -> Seaport Capital + Hicks Muse

Ex Libris -> Walden Israel + Tamar Technology

Geac -> Golden Gate

Polaris -> Croydon Company

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

Libraries demand choice.

Room for niche players

Domination by a large monopoly unlikely to be accepted by library

community

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

Key Issue

It’s essential for libraries to partner with a company that will be

one of the survivors of the industry.

Very disruptive to a library’s 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

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?

Technology Trends

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.

We need to fill in some gaps and achieve better integration.

Single point of management for each area of content

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Portals

Current development efforts focus on the front-

end of the ILS

Expand the Web-based OPAC into something

more like a portal

RSS—race to integrate RSS into the OPAC

Enhanced content.

Customization

Begins to replace some components of the

library Web site

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.