Marshall Breeding

Seminar:
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Where is the Industry Headed? Top Trends to Watch in 2004
February 11, 2004 | 54:31

Breeding will provide observations, perspectives, and opinions about trends related to the companies, products, and technologies of the library automation industry. While the library industry continues to be unpredictable, savvy librarians should be aware of the general factors that will shape library automation technology in the future.

As well, Breeding will offer a general sketch of the library automation business landscape: the types of companies involved, the health of the industry, the size of the market, the current rates of revenue growth, and sources for capital investment. The most-asked question about the industry involves business consolidation. The library automation industry today is only moderately consolidated. Might we expect further mergers or acquisitions?

With the high level of maturity of the automation systems on the market, the top systems offer very similar functionality. What then, do companies use to differentiate their products and services from their competitors? The current emphasis lies in offering functionality beyond the traditional ILS, focusing on providing automation related to managing and providing sophisticated access to electronic content. Reference linking, metasearching, bibliographic data enrichment, and Web-based patron self-service features are all becoming expected features.

The back-end infrastructure of library automation software stands ready for an overhaul. The internal design of the ILS is evolving toward Service Oriented Architecture and increased use of XML. Additionally, open source software his making a big splash in the broader technology sector. Will it impact the way that libraries deal with library automation software?

For details on these and other hot industry topics, join Marshall Breeding for his second Dynix Web Seminar.

You can also view Breeding's previous session by clicking the link below:

05 June 2003 - "Chief Considerations in Choosing an ILS"

Marshall Breeding
Library Technology Consultant and Author

Marshall Breeding is library technology officer at Vanderbilt University's Jean and Alexander Heard Library and a leading library technology consultant. He is a prolific author who has written nine books and more than 100 articles on topics including library automation, Internet technology, networking, and library trends.

As an accomplished speaker, Breeding has made more than 100 presentations to the library community through professional conferences and technology user group meetings. Online, Breeding maintains Library Technology Guides, a comprehensive resource and content site related to library automation, and lib-web-cats, a directory of libraries throughout the world.