2009

Marshall's Top Tech Trends for ALA Annual, Summer 2009

These trends are also posted on Library Technology Guides. Discovery Interfaces Expand Scope The genre of Discovery Interfaces has been an ongoing trend for the last few years. These interfaces aim to replace the traditional, stodgy OPAC with a modern interface, delivering library content through an interface more consistent with what patrons experience elsewhere on the Web. They offer visually appealing design, relevancy ranking, faceted navigation, and other standard Web navigation techniques. These products offer an attractive replacement for the online catalogs delivered with the ILS. The initial phase of this genre of products delivered a new interface. Yet, they remained largely tied to the content managed in the ILS, despite the ever increasing investments in electronic content. In many cases, a federated search component would aim to supplement the primarily print content of the ILS with a clumsy mechanism for accessing e-journals and database. We’re now seeing a new…

Top Technology Trends

Marshall Breeding’s Top Technology Trends

The Changed Business Landscape Many technology decisions are made in the corporate board room, not the laboratory nor even necessarily in the marketplace. The recent acquisition of Dynix by Sirsi reminds us that the shape of the automation landscape is largely formed by the interests of the behind-the-scenes investors that own the companies involved. While it’s yet to be seen what product offerings might change as a result of this business transaction, the potential impact is large. While we hope that the needs of libraries drive the development of library automation software, we must be aware that there are other factors at play as well. Consolidation Everywhere We see immediate evidence of the consolidation of the library automation business arena. Are more afoot? There will be a fewer number of larger companies developing software. But the remaining companies will have enormous resources. The new SirsiDynix entity, for example, will have…