Library Management Systems
decision support data and management information that assist librarians in their daily operations. Our Decision Centre and Reporter draw on the wealth of data that the library management system holds, and help library staff to make informed and accurate decisions about their service. For example, Decision Centre enables a member of staff to conduct detailed analysis of circulation activity across the collection and determine which areas or stock should receive additional investment, which require weeding to create additional space, or which should be moved to a different location to maximise usage. All of this is done through a user-friendly web interface.
One of the biggest challenges that users face is getting a seamless process for managing physical, electronic and digital content. Many library systems were developed during the time when all libraries had to worry about were physical books, journals, CDs, etc. Now there are databases, electronic journals and articles to license, e-books to circulate and manage, digitised collections of local material such as research papers in the
institutional repository, archival collections, and digitised photograph collections. The Encore Discovery platform provides a single interface to all of the resources that are managed by the library regardless of format. This ensures that library users do not
‘Libraries want simple management of resources and the systems that are used to manage them’
have to struggle with different interfaces for the resource formats that they need to fulfil their information requirements.
Key disruptors to libraries in the coming years are around the challenge of e-book licensing and the conflict between enabling access to resources against a need for increasingly-stringent data security concerns. E-book licensing and management is a challenge for the whole library and information industry – not just library system vendors. In many cases, the challenges
FEATURE
are about business models rather than technology. As publishers struggle with how they can thrive in an electronic age, they are creating barriers to the use of e-books. The Sierra Services Platform is designed to enable data to flow between e-book publishing solutions and the library system, with the aim of being able to present a unified view of physical and electronic book activity. However, the availability of content from publishers will affect libraries regardless of their technology platform. Libraries want simple management of resources and the systems that are used to manage them. In response, many libraries are looking to system providers to provide their solutions as software-as-a-service or in a cloud environment. Innovative Interfaces has seen a significant increase in demand for hosted systems and is responding to this by opening up additional data centres in different parts of the world including in Europe. However, for information services teams that house these systems, security against inappropriate use of data and unauthorised access is a key concern.
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