Library Systems: Strategic technical infrastructure to meet current needs and prepare for the future
Abstract: Libraries face many challenges in current times to provide collections and services in ways that meet the needs of their communities or parent organization. Public, academic, school, and other research libraries increasingly diverge in the nature of their work and in what they require of their technical system, yet they also share some core methods and principles. Changes in the publishing industry and in scholarly communications have made a profound impact on libraries. Transitions from print to electronic publication and from restrictions of subscription-based business models to open access have dramatically changed how libraries develop, manage, and provide access to their collections. The widespread adoption of smartphones in the consumer realm shapes expectations on the interfaces libraries provide for their services. A variety of trends in on the technical front impact the development of library systems, including open source versus proprietary software, increasing deployment via cloud technologies and multi-tenant platforms, and a growing interest in the microservices architecture.
All these trends help shape the resource management and discovery systems upon which libraries depend. Breeding will provide an overview of the current library technology landscape relative to these trends and suggest some directions that these technologies might head in their next phase of development.
https://librarytechnology.org/document/23534/
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