The Future of the ILS
LJ sat down with ten top executives in the ILS field and three librarians to talk about what lies ahead for integrated library systems—and the ILS industry Apr 1, 2011On January 8, 2011, LJ held a roundtable discussion in San Diego with top executives in the integrated library system (ILS) field and expert librarians. It was a revealing and wide-ranging conversation about the future of the ILS and covered a range of topics—from the impact of cloud computing and open source ILSs to issues surrounding user engagement, the digital divide, and declining library budgets. LJ pulled together some highlights.
| LJ Explores the Big Tools: a series of articles devoted to new developments in major tools for libraries | |
| “Liverpool’s Discovery” looks at a new search tool in action. | “Building a Better ERMS” examines e-resource management systems. |
| “The Next Generation of Discovery” delves into discovery tools. | “The New Frontier” presents LJ’s 2011 Automation Marketplace. |
| “The Future of the ILS” gives highlights from a roundtable of top ILS executives and librarians. | “Are You Satisfied?” showcases the results of LJ’s 2011 ILS satisfaction survey. |
| TABLE TALK A lively, engaged group met during ALA's Midwinter (top). At left, OCLC's Andrew Pace (c.) speaks about cloud computing while Equinox Software's Grace Dunbar and VTLS's Vinod Chachra listen. At right, LJ's David Rapp poses a question to the participants |
DAVID RAPP, LJ: What do you think is the single most compelling factor that will have an impact on ILSs and the industry in the future?
CARL GRANT, EX LIBRIS GROUP: I think it’s clearly the amount of digital content that we’re having to deal with these days in libraries and that, particularly in our customer base, we’re seeing 50 percent of the materials budget now going for digital content. But that brings a whole host of new issues to automation systems and particularly in things like how we are going to preserve this and how we are going to make sure we can handle all the licensing issues and the workflows that are associated with that while maintaining all of our current processes.
ANDREW PACE, OCLC: I’ll surprise no one by saying I think it’s cloud computing. More and more of that content is in the cloud, so it begs the question why we’re not running our systems there and why we’re not running our services there. Our partners are there, our libraries are there, our users are there. I sometimes refer to this as the metadata irony: Why is the metadata about the stuff the library collects on this local machine either under somebody’s desk or in a server room someplace, being maintained library by library by library?
NEIL BLOCK, INNOVATIVE INTERFACES: I think we’re all going to be working with libraries that need to do things more efficiently, and they need to streamline and automate workflows and processes because really the staff and people who used to do these things are no longer available at the library. So of course this does mean cloud computing, but cloud computing is just one small component. We really need to wrap our arms around the enhanced and enriched workflows to engage people and also deliver that data, digital content, to where they live in their digital neighborhood, which is really on their phone, on their device, and tap into mobility, which is superimportant right now.
BILL SCHICKLING, POLARIS LIBRARY SYSTEMS: I think our biggest issue is in the past: when we presented automation to libraries, we couldn’t present the automation as a way to replace librarians. Well, the librarians are now gone. A lot of libraries have lost a lot of staff, and they need better automation to continue to operate, to bring the services to their communities that they want. And I think being able to link communities is still a big part of what libraries do, and providing software to do that is a big part.
JOHN YOKLEY, PTFS: I’ll agree with Bill that library budgets are being cut, and therein lies the reason why I think open source is going to have a big play in the future, providing expert systems and even digital systems to libraries in and out of both the ILS and digital components, as well. These future library systems will include ILSs, but they’ll also be combined with digital products, discovery systems, workflow capability, and so forth. And as the library budget gets cut, the librarians are going to be looking more and more for alternative ways to give services with their restricted budgets.
GARY RAUTENSTRAUCH, SIRSIDYNIX: A major trend that we see that requires not only ILS but just technology in general is a trend toward libraries collaborating, cooperating, sharing resources among different libraries. And we see that in things like consortia, statewide library systems, all kinds of ways that libraries have right now of working together for economic reasons, and it just makes so much sense in today’s environment.
ANNETTE HARWOOD MURPHY, THE LIBRARY CORPORATION: Beyond the valid points that have just been made, there is an important role that we could all play in promoting libraries to the public so that there is real public support of our libraries. If you think about the budget for public libraries across the United States compared with the trillions and trillions of dollars that are spent in state, federal, and county monies, it’s such a small part of it. But the public needs to be aware of the services that have been cut and will continue to be. And I think we as vendors could help promote that to the public because we know how to advertise.
VINOD CHACHRA, VTLS: I do agree with the concept that there is a lot of digital content being created and that we need cloud computing to help serve it out and so forth, but there needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking as far as libraries are concerned. Up until recently, libraries developed collections to serve the communities that they were located in. And that’s going to shift because the collections that they create will define the communities they serve, which is the exact opposite of the way it used to be in the physical world. In the electronic world it will be completely opposite.
| THINK TANK A stellar group assembled for LJ's ILS Roundtable during ALA Mindwinter. Top row (l.-r.): Brett Bonfield, Michael Winkler, John Yokley, Paul Cope, Annette Harwood Murphy, Neil Block, and Gary Rautenstrauch. Seated (l.-r.): Peter Murray, Andrew Pace, Vinod Chachra, Grace Dunbar, Carl Grant, and Bill Schickling |
Engaging users
PETER MURRAY, LYRASIS: One thing I think we’re missing here in a lot of the discussion so far has been what library vendors can do for libraries, what libraries can do for users. And what we’re missing is what users can do for themselves to improve the betterment of the broader community. I’ll poke at Andrew [Pace] a little bit, because he’s the only one from OCLC at the table, and say that this involves releasing what it is that the library data is, and to everyone around the table, have systems that allow users to augment that, to turn that into their own, and then when they do that, they become more invested in their library. If [libraries become] something that they themselves invest the time in—think of Wikipedia, think of any other crowd-sourced tool—then they will naturally support it because it isn’t something that’s being done to them, it isn’t something that’s being done for them, it’s something that they’re actively engaged in.
MICHAEL WINKLER, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LIBRARIES: Absolutely, it’s the engagement of our users, of our clients, that is really the important part here. Our budgets are going down because people see less and less value to the work that we’re doing. [People] are able to find materials themselves. Our budgets are going down because people don’t see the value of all of the organizational work that we’re doing. So trying to get people engaged in the teaching and learning process is a very important thing for universities. How libraries support that mission becomes very important to the longevity of the library at the university. Being able to demonstrate that value to faculty and to students becomes the critical selling point for us.
PAUL COPE, AUTO-GRAPHICS: That’s one of the issues that we’re all talking about: how does the end user, who wants to find out if something is available, get to it. We don’t provide all of the tools yet to make that information available.
GRANT: I do think it’s important for people to realize this isn’t an either/or situation. We can have all the data in the cloud, and we can still have front ends to that data to our community of users and the librarian that offer very tailored services back out to them. And through things like open platforms and open APIs [application programming interfaces], you can develop extensions to the systems to continue to offer unique services. But having all that data in the cloud really is going to give us the capability to run analytics and develop new kinds of services that we can only talk about today. So there are a lot of good reasons for this movement toward the cloud, although I don’t want to portray this as anything new. This is an evolutionary step, and we’re just following what’s happened in enterprise for many years now.
MURRAY: There’s wisdom that the profession has in bringing those services to bear. But I don’t want to lose track of the value that the users themselves bring to interacting with this data. You know, we see it in very early forms in recommendation engines. That you looked at this item and checked it out means that somebody else who looked at this item might also want to check it out.
PACE: It’s much more important to have the recommendation, have the enriched content, than it is to make minute and largely unsubstantial changes to individual records.
BLOCK: I think the future is going to be wiring and plugging together all sorts of services, all sorts of collections. But no one organization or platform can have all the data, can have everything. And so it depends on our ability to be able in a local environment to bring together those services that are most important for our users as opposed to trying to present a single monolith of something that has every bit of data, because that’s just impossible.
The digital divide
BRETT BONFIELD, COLLINGSWOOD PUBLIC LIBRARY, NJ: A huge portion of what we do at the public library is bottom up. It’s people who don’t have access to an iPad. I worry about the people who need access to information who don’t have another alternative. I need to go to the people in my community, whether an academic library or a public library, and make it very clear to them that they can trust us to have resources and then have those resources be there the next time and have them be there the time after that. We can’t cut our budget back to the point where the information isn’t there for them anymore, or the access point to the information isn’t available anymore.
GRANT: I admire what libraries have always tried to do for the disadvantaged, but we’re in a society today in this country where the gap between the rich and the poor is rapidly expanding. But it brings to bear the whole issue of [being] able to serve those who are going to vote for tax increases, who are going to fund us. We’ve got to give them what they need in order to be able to develop enough capacity to serve those poor, and those poor are growing in large numbers. So we’ve got to pay a lot of attention to the top end in order to take care of the bottom end. Otherwise, it’s just not realistic to say we want to do it.
PACE: The next little bell and whistle or the next little price increase or cost change to something that is a commodity part of the service—when I’m talking to librarians, that’s not the things that they want. They’re more worried about how do I get access to those people, how do I increase the story time, how do I keep the doors open, as opposed to some next set of release notes that’s got ten new features that’s going to justify the cost of some technology going up.
SCHICKLING: We’ve put a lot of effort into this in Polaris. We’ve done a lot to help libraries promote the community. We’ve created widgets so the community organizations can grab searches and put them into their websites. We’ve created the ability to set up events and agendas and have it be search-specific, so that it comes up with the results. I think people are working on these things. I can’t believe we’re the only ones working on it.
GRANT: I’ve talked to over 600 library directors in the last three months. And when I asked them, “How do you market? How do you tell people you’ve got a new service or capability?,” a lot of them just put [new services] up. Some actually do very advanced marketing campaigns. And when you look at the usage stats on the system, it’s a marked difference. So it isn’t just us offering great technology. We’ve got to convince librarians, “You’ve got to get out there and talk about it, folks.”
GRACE DUNBAR, EQUINOX SOFTWARE: I keep hearing “we” and “you” and “What can we do? What can you do?” We’ve got a community that’s using our library, and we want to be a part of the community that is building the products, that’s pushing for how we use the products that our users use, and how can we work together and be more open to bring our community together?
Open source vs. proprietary
RAPP: I get the sense that a lot of libraries really want more control over the technology, and some institutions are basically building their own ILSs from scratch. What roles do open source and proprietary software, respectively, play in the future of the ILS, and how will they work together?
CHACHRA: They can work cooperatively at libraries. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be open source. It can be proprietary source, too. A shining example of marketing and working together is the Queens Library [NY]. And they’re building something completely different, completely new, and they aren’t using open source to do it, and yet they’re taking pieces from everywhere and creating it and then marketing. [Editor’s note: VTLS and the Queens Library are collaborating on the library’s daVinci ILS.]
RAPP: There’s an open source component to it.
CHACHRA: There are open source components, there are proprietary components, and there are self-developed components…to create a unique solution for the community they want to serve.
YOKLEY: I think that one of the things about open source that you’re going to see in the future is the capability of the libraries to create some best-of-breed models. I think if we have some integration layers that are better, easier to utilize for librarians, it’s going to really change the game.
BLOCK: There have been successes, particularly in the areas of discovery, I think, which we all acknowledge as much more of a mix-and-match environment, where one can use a different discovery interface with one’s core system. But in this age where we’re all looking to do the most with the least amount of staff and resources possible, is it really viable to say that we will stretch this out over three or four or five different relationships with different vendors? I mean, just actual nuts-and-bolts stuff that gets really difficult to manage. So I think there are some successes, and there probably will be more in the future, and each library needs to make their decision about how much time they need to spend on that area and how that relates to service delivered and interaction with their end users.
BONFIELD: I think open source is something that most librarians sort of morally agree with. But we also are comfortable with the idea that just because we like something, we don’t pick it. Just because I like a book doesn’t mean that I put it on the shelf. So for me, the advantages of open source aren’t so much a moral issue; it’s an economic question. And I think that certainly the interoperability that comes along with open source is wonderful, and I think that’s what people tend to concentrate on. And the more interoperability I’ll introduce and the more standards that you agree to, everybody benefits, in my opinion. But I think that there are other things that come with open source that don’t get talked about very much. One of them is that the data that we are stewarding for our users is ours.
But there are two other pieces that come along with the open source that I think are really important. One is knowing our programmers. You know that the open source developers tend to participate in Code4Lib, that we see them in person at the conferences, we see their contributions on the mailing list, and we get to see their comments. It’s a really valuable thing because again it’s that trust piece, and that completely gets lost a lot of time in the interoperability conversation. And the last is that the pricing is public. I’m making a commitment to try not to buy anything where the pricing isn’t on the website, where I can’t go and say, “This is what I’m paying.” Because when I talk to my colleagues, I want to be able to talk to them about the value that I’m deriving from the money that I’m putting in. And so if the pricing isn’t transparent, my trust is not there for you.
CHACHRA: But let me raise another issue on open source here. The people that do open source development have to make a living. They have to have a job. So fundamentally if they’re not getting revenues from the work they’re doing in open source, where are they getting their revenues from, and will they continue to be supported so they can make a living?
MURRAY: I looked at the year-end Linux report, who is contributing to the [open source] Linux kernel. And by far in terms of contributions, the number of contributors is individuals who are unaffiliated with any kind of company—18 percent. The next highest is Red Hat, which makes a business out of selling this, in the 12 percent range. But right after this group is IBM. They’ve got a business of selling their own operating systems. So what is it about the Linux operating system that makes the companies that are proprietary, closed source companies want to contribute parts of their effort to supporting this code base?
What is it that we could change in the dynamic that would allow those of you at the table to contribute your effort to the open source community to make that thrive…to raise all the boats?
YOKLEY: The corporations that are involved in open source have to have a business model to make money or it’s not going to happen. If you look at any successful open source venture, any of them, the ones that are most successful have had good corporate involvement in some way, shape, or form. And the reason why the open source ILS is starting to take off now is because of the companies that have been able to figure out some kind of a business model to help sponsor development and organize it to make it go.
RAUTENSTRAUCH: I’d make two points. First about proprietary systems: they are not necessarily very closed. I have a very, very active community of libraries that use APIs and web services and share the things they’ve developed with each other to provide services and different things for their library. Second, if you look at the patron interfaces that all of us are developing now, they often include steps in that direction, such as cell phone networking and things that allow patrons to actually be involved with the data and with the library and to share with other patrons, as well. It’s all moving in that direction.
BLOCK: I’m often struck if I listen to people who are very passionate about open source—a lot of times there’ll be a lot of Macs and a lot of iPhones, and the intersection of open source and Apple products is very strong and prevalent.... Well, Apple might be the most closed organization in the history of the universe. You can’t change a battery on an iPhone. If you get the sad face, you’ve got to go buy a new one. And, granted, they do it because they make great products and services. And I think what has made this industry unique is that we can put five programmers in a corner and come up with a new and different way, and then go out and compete in the marketplace of ideas. I kind of like the competitive aspect of it, myself.
SCHICKLING: I have to follow that up. I’m not a very black-and-white person, and so when I see black and white, it bothers me. And I don’t understand why it has to be one way or the other, and it doesn’t. I always hear that argument.... I mean, I don’t think any of the commercial ILS vendors are out there trying to tear apart open source. We’ve all said, “It’s a competitive environment. Welcome to the fray.”
COPE: If a customer were to come to us and say, “We want this,” I can build it. I can put it into my system, and whether I make it part of an API or I make it so that they can just hook to it, it doesn’t matter who writes it. I mean, if you have a need for it, you can put it on a priority list. You can do it. If a commercial vendor sees that everybody is going to want it, then there might be a different model of how that gets done. It really becomes: do you have to commission and pay for the whole thing, or are you going to share it with your existing user community?...Ultimately, you have to decide how much you want your data to be open. That’s something that as a vendor we just have to provide the tools, and then you decide as librarians how much you want that data to be changed and modified. And that’s a big question that still is pretty unclear in the industry in my experience, where people will say, “No, some want it, some don’t.”
Cloud computing
RAPP: What will be the role of cloud computing–based services going forward?
GRANT: Well, I think the role is enormous going forward for what we’re seeing happen in our field. And, again, I think we’re just following what’s happened in the enterprise field and it’s growing very rapidly. But it isn’t just offering Software-as-a-Service. It’s an architecture that goes with it that means that we can use one instance of software to service many users. We have a common pooling of resources, and it’s from that common pooling of resources that come the analytical capabilities and the ability to develop new scalable library services. So it gives us the capability to transform librarianship, but it does mean that we have to make the transition into the cloud. And I think that’s very important, because it brings with it a whole host of issues, particularly in the workflows that go with it and the workflow engines that drive it.
PACE: I think the other piece is it’s a fundamental philosophical shift. In the old IT model, the enterprise made all of the decisions about what was right for all of the users. And in the cloud model, the users are making the decisions about what’s right for the enterprise. I think cloud computing and the models of it, and the things that have emerged—Facebook, Twitter, things like that—it’s the users who were in control of the progression of these technologies.
GRANT: The integration shifts in that environment from all of our individual components out to how we integrate with the authentication systems, the course management systems. The integration becomes much more outward. We tend to be a very introspective profession, and what cloud computing’s going to force on us is...to focus on the world and how we fit into it and where we have opportunities to integrate our services into it.
CHACHRA: We have an example of how people go through different stages if they’re driven purely by economics and not personality. There is an organization that had 212 libraries and 27 computers. Four years later, they said, “No, no. That’s too many computers. We’ll make it six computers.” And then a year and a half ago, they saw the economics of it, and all of them ran on one computer. And it’s driven by economics and a willingness to cooperate—a willingness to give up a little bit for the common good.
PACE: I would say it’s not just economic, it’s environmental. Right? If you think about an average server having the carbon footprint of a Ford F-150, then what’s the carbon footprint of libraries? What’s the carbon footprint for every one of those servers, library by library by library by library?
Library budgets
RAPP: Library budgets are in decline. Is having less money to go around affecting what you are looking to do in the future?
GRANT: Let me say here that most companies use the opportunity of an economic crisis to increase their investment in development because they know when the economy turns around, there’ll be a surge of buying. So I know we very much adopt that policy. We’re spending a lot of resources.
BLOCK: Our commitment to development actually increases in this time. Just as we see use of the public libraries, for instance, increases in hard economic times. We need to commit further to this. Another area that I would say we spend a lot of effort on is professional services. Many libraries that may not have the staff for a particular project, for a particular service, they may be without staff, which causes a gap in management of certain areas...look to a partner like a vendor for professional services. And I think this will be an area where we see more and more activity in the future, not only in the development but in provision of services.
DUNBAR: It’s interesting that you brought up the economics there, because we’re finding that it has encouraged a lot of libraries that we work with to come together in the general Evergreen or Koha community. It has given them a platform where they can work together to determine what their common needs are and what kinds of things they want to develop, which they’ll bring to us or do in-house with the talent they have. So I enjoy that it’s encouraging a more community aspect.
GRANT: One of my concerns with the profession has long been [our need for] some higher coordination of what is the vision for the future of libraries. Because we all can contribute to that vision and peel off pieces we can build, to make sure it’ll plug into the next piece. But we don’t really have that in this country, and we really, really desperately need it…. Let’s actually get some leadership going to move libraries forward on a national basis. Then we could take all this brilliant innovation and focus it..…What is good library service in this country? Who defines that? What are we trying to address? How do we say we have provided value to our communities? And we don’t have a definition. Until we do, it makes it very hard for us to all make informed and intelligent investments and decisions about how we advance it. You don’t walk out your door and go to the West Coast without a map. We’ve got to have a plan.
| Author Information |
| David Rapp is Associate Editor, Technology, LJ |
