Changing markets, changing relationships: How libraries and vendors respond to the “next generation” challenge

Dissatisfaction with the online public access catalog (in particular) and the integrated library system (in general) have prompted a variety of responses from libraries and library automation vendors. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and examine these responses to get some sense of the library automation market's “trajectory.”

The approach is to write a discursive essay on: the “broken” online public access catalogs; a review of the literature about online catalog features, limitations and remedies; customer (library) responses; (library automation) vendor responses, including a review of recent market surveys, and an attempted meta‐analysis of some of those surveys; and an attempt to redefine the ILS.

The findings suggest the market “trajectory” is towards products other than the “traditional” ILS. Literature describing ILS faults and remedies may be productively applied to these other products.

The attempted meta‐analysis is not statistically valid, so it can only be used as “loosely” descriptive of the library automation market. The impact and potential utility of social computing tools is not addressed.

A redefined ILS includes the wide range of services libraries provide or attempt to provide, rather than operating within the narrow definition of the traditional ILS. The essay provides a wider range of products for inclusion in requests for proposals for new library systems, and suggests new criteria to evaluate library systems as a whole, and the constituent parts of such systems.

The findings, if applied to the creation of new requests for proposals for new library automation products, may make it easier for libraries to state their needs, and for vendors to create new systems to meet those needs.