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N public libraries the library management system (LMS) is no longer the central piece of library technology it was. In his 2020 Library Systems Report, Marshal Breeding noted, ‘Technology for public library automation has been mired in stagnation’.1
UK public libraries have seen a steep decline in the core service of book loans. In these terms, use of public libraries is now 70 per cent less than it was in 2000.2
In the UK public libraries are protected by their status as a statutory (mandatory) service but there is little sense of them being a core activity.
Trends in the library technology market – A UK perspective
Ken Chad looks at the underlying issues and trends that are shaping library technology. His piece focuses on public libraries and libraries in higher education institutions.
library authority customers at a single stroke – nearly 10 per cent of the UK public library market. Losing means a huge loss in market share, prestige and, of course, revenues. It’s a tough business. In December 2020 Capita announced that it had agreed to sell its Education Software Solutions (ESS) division which is the home of the Capita LMS businesses. It judged these no longer formed part of its core business.
Cuts in spending in the last decade have exacerbated the situation. Since 2010/11, library net expenditure has declined by 37 per cent in real terms.3 It is no surprise then that the annual
revenues that vendors can obtain from library systems has diminished signifi
cantlyandthiscontributestothe stagnation in library technology that Breeding notes. In 2019 Cheshire West and Chester Council issued an Request For Information (RFI) for a joint library management system (LMS) that stated the, ‘indicative annual budget for this provision is £18-£20,000’. It would have been more than double that a decade ago. Shared services are a key strategy in reducing costs and, in the UK, most library authorities are part of a shared LMS service. In Wales, a single LMS for the country was expected to, ‘save authorities up to 70 per cent on automa- tion costs’.4
For vendors, these consortia
can be a boon or a nightmare. Winning a shared service LMS contract can increase market share dramatically. For example, winning the London Libraries Consor- tium in 2018 gave SirsiDynix 19 new
In the UK public libraries are protected by their status as a statutory (mandatory) service but there is little sense of them being a core activity. Instead you get the sense local authorities are not sure how librariesfitinwiththeirstrategicgoals. In 2017 Northamptonshire council set out proposals to axe up to 28 of the county’s 36 libraries.5
If councils are not clear
about the goals of a public library service it should not be surprising that the investment they are prepared to make in library technology solutions is low.
Libraries in Higher Education HE institutions are driven by two core (revenue generating) activities: teaching and learning and research. Libraries are judged primarily by their ability to support those activities. The LMS is losing its value. Journal articles form the major resource provided by HE Libraries, with subscrip- tions typically taking up over 75 per cent of their resource budgets. A library system may be used to manage those subscrip- tions but, unlike books, journal articles are neither catalogued nor circulated by the LMS. The move to open access may make the management of subscriptions largely redundant. Even the role of the
Ken Chad is Director of Ken Chad consulting.
www.kenchadconsulting.com
ubiquitous library discovery system is under question. “Discovery happens else- where” is a widely acknowledged refrain.6 Indeed many undergraduates don’t need to ‘discover’ resources at all: their reading list, embedded in the virtual learning environment/learning management system tells them what they need and provides a link to it. There is a dichotomy too about what constitutes a resource that is managed (and paid for) by the library (e.g. journal articles and books) and what is a learning resource (e.g. course resources and content, increasingly including digital textbooks, lectures etc) that is typically managed in the virtual learning environment (VLE) and paid for from the learning budget. The LMS/LSP has almost no role to play in managing or delivering these ‘learning’ resources.
New problems for old: What are library
technology companies doing? While vendors can’t yet abandon the LMS with its long term customers and steady income they need to address higher value problems to enable libraries to be
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