This page should not be indexed by search engine crawlers (it has the "robots" meta with noindex in the header). For more information about how this was generated (and why), see the DLTJ article Automatically Generating Podcast Transcripts.
Uncorrected Transcript
Welcome everyone.
Uh This is part of an informal conversation series that Nice O is producing uh as a, an addition to Nice Os uh traditional educational programs.
And kicking off this series is Marshall Breeding.
Um Marshall for those of you who don't know you, um which would surprise me.
I think many people in our industry do.
Uh Why don't you give us just a little bit of background about you and your, your background in your work?
Sure.
Um By the way, thanks for inviting me to be part of this new series.
I think it'll be very interesting.
Uh So I wear a lot of different hats. Uh um The quick version is I'm a kind of author, writer, consultant speaker. Uh You know, my uh I've had a lot of interesting opportunities to be involved in what I consider the library technology industry. That's my focus technology that libraries use. Uh So I uh gather data uh related to that through my website, I can keep track of libraries and the systems that they use in different categories and that, you know, is a component of the, the data gathering that feeds a lot of the other things that I are kind of like my outputs, the reports that I write the talks that I give. Uh, so, you know, it's a little niche that I have. I think that others, uh don't spend as much time, uh, you know, specialized in.
Uh, then I do consulting for, for mostly for, for libraries but other kinds of organizations as well.
You know, I worked in an academic library for a long time. So, yeah, I do those but I also kind of try to get projects with other kinds of libraries, you know, publics and, and corporate and, and different kinds. So it kind of rounds out my my knowledge. And so I like that I, I like being exposed to a lot of different kinds of libraries and the way they approach their collections and services and so forth. Yeah. And uh you've also been a member and participant in a variety of nice o activities over the years for which we are greatly appreciative.
Um The reason that I brought you asked to uh to speak with you, one of the reports that you mentioned uh was featured in the latest month of American libraries.
Um sorry, it disappeared there for a second.
Um But you do an annual Library Systems report.
Um Can you just tell us a little bit about how that got started and, and um a little bit about what it covers and then we'll dig into the details about this year's report. So how it got started is a multi uh it is a more complex question. So library journal for a long time, did a report called I think the library automation marketplace. And they've been doing that for many years and then 2002, they asked me to, to, to do that that year and then that was uh recurring. I kept doing it for uh a number of years under their library journal.
Um And then um I guess going on a decade ago, the report changed uh kind of names and publications become the library systems report published by American libraries, but the report is the same.
Uh And so what is the nature of the report? Uh So the scope, you know, our kind of library automation systems, you know, integrated library systems, library services platforms, discovery systems, kind of other kind of big pieces of technology that that libraries use. And then the the business trends, the business events that happen year after year, the when I started doing the report for library journal, I created this survey vendor survey uh that asked vendors a lot of kind of detailed questions about how many uh what systems they sell? What were the sales that year? How many folks work for them? What categories narrative. So that survey I've been using pretty much unchanged the whole time. And that kind of gives me, you know, 20 years, years' worth of data over time that describes the industry. So I kind of like that to be able to kind of flesh out trends, you know, what systems have come and gone over, you know, those two decades and, and so forth. So I, I like the kind of the stories of the history of library automation as well. Mhm. Yeah. I mean, there's a great thread that you've gathered over the, over the time that you've been doing this and actually I think it predates um predates your work, at least the, the, the visuals do on your website. It's kind of really fascinating this sort of life cycle, family tree of the community organizations in our space.
Um So yeah, I like doing those visualizations, you know, I kind of think more visually than uh you know, to help me kind of see things in, in my own mind. So, you know, I, you know, I had this really crude way of, of kind of capturing that, that I had for a lot of years and then um about five or six years ago, maybe even longer ago, I came up with the current version where there's one visualization per I would say company but company family or whatever.
Uh And you know, how do you kind of capture, you know, in, in one uh visualization kind of this really rich history. Uh I think these visualizations uh begin in like 1980 run toward the, the the future and you can see them all the different companies that exist within some of the companies now, you know, they can big fish, eats little fish and so forth. So, yeah, it's kind of fascinating. It's kind of fascinating to think of the transitions and how diverse our marketplace was organizationally. Um Maybe, you know, 2025 maybe 35 years ago or more.
And that's a fundamental point. The industry has changed from being fragmented to consolidated and is that a good or a bad thing? Uh You know, when you look at the, you know, the earlier parts of those charts, you see maybe dozens of companies competing with each other, but they weren't very big, their products were in differentiated, they didn't have a lot of resources. So, you know, there, there were more choices but there weren't choices that mattered. And you might say, whereas you bring it to current day, there are fewer choices but the choices are, are way different from each other. Uh for profit, nonprofit, open source, proprietary, uh you know, so integrated library systems, library services platforms. So, in a way that consolidation is kind of resulted in a fewer number of, kind of more interesting choices.
Um, some folks would agree, disagree with that. They would say more choices. We need more choices. Mhm. Yeah. But I, I think you're right in that those are, those choices are fundamentally different and what you can do with those systems is fundamentally different and who's producing them are fundamentally different.
Um The organizational structures that the, the key elements I think are, are, are fascinating as we're looking at this ecosystem and we'll get into some of the kind of impacts of the report in a minute.
Um But as you're thinking about this ecosystem, we went through a pretty significant wave of consolidation over the last, you know, 57 years.
Um I'm wondering what you see in the future in, in that regard because as you say, we've kind of bifurcated into these pools. Um where fundamentally, the open source approach is very different from the, you know, corporate approach, which is different from the, the the service models that exist in various elements here. I'm wondering, will we, do you think we've passed this era of consolidation or is there, you know, maybe a decade hence gonna be even fewer players here? Um Lots of different ways to approach that question one is I wouldn't separate open source from the corporate approach because the way that open source is implemented, especially in the US and, and Europe and, and other uh parts of the world that have more resources, it's almost always through some type of uh commercial support services.
So, I mean, you look at E S O with Folio, that's certainly a commercial offering uh involving open source software. So, but I think that's an important trend is that that commercially supported open source has, can you know, over time become a bigger part of, of what libraries are doing here.
Uh But when, when you look at the business side, you know, I've, you know, even though the last year uh was not a big year for mergers and acquisitions, you know, it's hard to imagine that it's all over that, you know, there, uh there will continue to believe, be, I believe uh more acquisitions that will further consolidate the industry, but who knows what those players will be uh on one side, you know, you look at some of the big roll ups, you know, they've already captured a lot of the available companies.
Uh There are a few few left that could kind of become part of uh other types of uh acquisitions that might involve kind of follow up acquisitions that bring companies together and, and that kind of thing. Uh My crystal ball is cloudy about what the specifics might be.
Um But you know, the trend lately has not, you know, before the trend was competitors buying each other. Now, the trend is more this uh vertical consolidation where some kind of big player, either in the industry or adjacent to the industry, you know, buys interesting uh companies and products that they think will fill out their portfolio.
So kind of imagine, you know, what kinds of companies out there uh would find a library automation system to be an interesting addition to their portfolio uh because they're all kind of building out this matrix of products that they think will help them have a bigger impact on their industry, uh which, you know, may not be library specifically, it might be higher education, it might be educational uh resources, uh educational technology, you know, so there's different ways to think that library automation systems can fit into the future business realm. I don't think folks like, you know, Google and Amazon and the like will take an interest in library automation systems.
You know, we're just way too small and hard to imagine that that will help their global business. But you know what, what are some other possibilities uh kind of within the spaces that we think about and 11 could guess. Yeah, I mean, you, you, you might imagine um a content producing organization thinking that that uh entry into the library market might be of interest to them or something else along those lines. But you can also remember severe when they bought Endeavor Information Systems in Voyager. So on that, you know, is this a direction the industry is going to take and that one kind of here? Yeah, you know, that el severe really uh didn't hang on to the the Voyager
I L S that long. They were kind of more interested in the the journals package that Endeavor had.
Um So yeah, it, it was kind of a interesting uh anomaly at that period of the industry. Uh you know, Libras eventually acquired uh endeavor from uh el severe as you remember. Yeah. Yeah. But it's interesting to think, you know, how, how a corporate executive or industry leader might think about these combinations and awareness of history is also a useful, useful thing. Uh, what has worked and what hasn't worked in the past.
Yeah, someone's tried this before, um, in, in the idea of try this before you focus a bit on your report about, I'm gonna quote uh important breakthroughs as you describe them uh regarding open source systems, you mentioned open source a little bit earlier. What do you think was, was driving those, those breakthroughs? Uh We've been talking about open source systems for, you know, 15, 20 years now, what do you think has really made the difference in the last couple of years that this is the, the year of the open source I s
Well, so it's been building for a while, you know, when open source I S is, you know, kind of started showing up in the, like the early two thousands I thought, oh, this is going, is this gonna be a uh a big deal? And I, you know, it could either kind of gently uh enter into the industry. It could be maybe this more hockey stick kind of rise. It turned out to be gentle so far that I think uh 10% more or less of academic libraries in the US use an open source system after all that time. And about either 17 or 14, I'd have the number in front of me for and to public libraries are using an open source I L S. So it is a gradually increasing portion of the industry but occasionally bigger events happen. And the bigger event last year was the Library of Congress, you know, one you know, the largest library in the world. And you know, uh they had been looking for uh a set of technologies replace this kind of assemblage that they have of many different I L S s and other components that they use to, to manage their library and, and their, their services and so forth and, and they landed on folio. So, you know, it is hard to understate how important that selection was um that they saw open source as consistent with the way that, you know, they want to interact with their systems to build their systems, chose sco as their development partner to build a version of Folio that will meet these needs. So, you know, that that's a big event and some other big consortia, you know, uh chose uh Folio as well, you know, so it's kind of like it's been, even Folio itself has been building for, for five or six years. Uh And finally, it's gotten to the kind of point where folks are announcing big implementations. So it's not as sudden as it appears because it's uh uh a software project that has been developing through its community for a number of years uh with significant support from E S O to provide the kind of financial resources and sustainability it takes to get to this point. And the point here is that maybe it's in the category of too big to fail. I mean, the Library of Congress isn't going to uh choose, it isn't going to not go forward with this choice. They, they, it's a $25 million project over the years and, you know, they, you know, they have and has the resources to, to carry this out. So, um so yeah, it's uh it's, it's having a big impact and as you know, you know, go to conferences and, and hear what folks are talking about, there's, there's a lot of conversations about open source and folio, not everyone's gung ho about it, but there are a lot that see promise. Uh But it kind of raises the conversation of that. There are different ways to build and support software. Now open source is going to appeal to some and not to others. Yeah. Do you think that has also something to do with uh two factors? The first being, it takes a long time for libraries to decide on which system to purchase and, and which direction to go? I mean, that decision making process is labored. Um But also it's taken the community that's working on this open source software to reach a level of stability that an organization like a significant organization would be like, OK, we're gonna commit, uh, you know, this is actually functional. We don't have to uh worry about it breaking. You know, there's a certain stability in the folio system that didn't exist maybe five years ago. Yeah, I, I think that's right. You know, the, you know, their main competitor is Alma. Alma had a 10 year head start. So at what point is there enough there that, you know, that they, they're, they're kind of uh marketed the same kinds of libraries, you know, medium and large academics. So when is there enough functionality in something like folio, uh that one, a library can actually use it uh you know, to meet their daily needs and that it has the promise to kind of keep growing uh as a system over time. Uh you know, no library would want to buy a system that doesn't have a significant kind of development road map going forward. You know, libraries are always gonna want more, no systems ever done. Uh Libraries are never satisfied uh with functionality. There's always enhancements in the kind of new areas of, of service they want addressed and, and so forth. So these have to be growing and organic systems. So yeah, in order to survive and be of interest. Yeah, it, I think it's gonna be really interesting to see over the next five ish years. Um how these trends continue and how the competitors in this marketplace react to these new uh develop the developments in this, in this ecosystem. Sure. And the dive, you know, the the trends are different and it would mostly about the academic sphere and we'd have a different conversation. We're talking more about public libraries that also includes open source and proprietary options. Um but in a different way, I mean, like the, the Coa and Evergreen I S systems have been evolving for a couple of decades now. So um it, it's different than folio that has kind of been developing for a shorter amount of time and now kind of making headlines. Yeah. Yeah. Um When it comes to the foundational elements of these systems, again, maybe this is where life gets into a geeky, nice level conversation. Um We've been talking about over the last maybe decade uh transition to linked data and the BIB frame model. Um And you touch on this a little bit in your um in your exposition to what extent is the vendor community adopting bib frame in their systems architectures? Um Is it gaining traction from your perspective? So vendors will implement something new like bed frame to the extent that libraries ask them to. Uh And this is a case where there's a tier of libraries that are asking them to uh you know, there, there has been uh interest in finding ways for libraries to be more findable on the web. To be able to take advantage of sema semantic web technologies to be able to uh kind of better explore the, the concepts and relationships and so forth that are bound within our, you know, universe of bibliographic data that lives inside library systems. Um So open link data, you know, ha has been kind of developing for a while, as you said, uh bib frame and a couple of different versions of that, you know, driven by the Library of Congress and and other organizations. Uh The share V D E group is an example of folks that are exploring how Bib frame can work uh in the library in the library systems, discovery room. So Bib frame is going to be an increasing part of what at least big library systems are going to be able to support uh the the systems out there that are oriented to academic libraries. Um you know, have known about this for a long time and have flexible metadata models that are not kind of locked in to, to mark. So the ability to uh create uh export uh publish and and make use of linked data and bib frame records is a piece of functionality that is evolving pretty rapidly in systems like Almond folio, for example, uh it uh is less used in other systems, right? You look in the public library arena. Bib frame is really not part of the conversation, you know, they they are perfectly happy to be able to accept, you know, mark records from vendors that get loaded in their catalog to create uh shelf ready uh material uh for the, you know, vast amount of new resources that they're adding to their collections. So uh discover happens uh in different ways uh in the public library sphere. Um So yeah, bib frame is uh yeah, it is getting there. The Library of Congress is committed to delivering Bib frame is uh their primary cataloging string. Uh But I don't think that they're talking about ever stopping mark for the libraries that need to receive bibliographic records that way. So it, it, it's a layer, it adds uh complexity to the bibliographic uh ecosystem. Uh But again, it's hit some certain thresholds and marks that uh make you realize that at some point it's going to be part of the way that at least the top tier libraries uh describe their resources and use those uh technologies and relationships. Uh as an increasing component of the way that discovery happens. It's not just going to be just kind of keyword searching anymore. Uh It's going to be exploring relationships that you can get uh out of open link data. Uh Yeah. So there, there, there's a lot to say there. Yeah. No, definitely. I, I come, I'm kind of feeling uh And I, I've said this repeatedly that uh what will move the community from Mark to Bib Frame at scale everywhere is um either it's significantly cheaper, significantly less complicated. Um You don't have a choice. Uh you know, a one of the, you know, it's either more, less expensive. The, those are the sorts of business rationale reasons why you move from a technology to technology, technology A to technology B and it's hard to see any of those will ever happen with BEB FRAME. It's hard to imagine a time when it's less expensive to create a Beb frame record than a mark record. Uh And then you say, well, the community, well, the community is a global community, you look at the kind of global bibliographic ecosystem. You know, we talked about some of the top tier systems that yeah, they'll do bib frame. But what about all of the others, you know, our libraries in Latin America and India and other parts of uh the world going to be able to make this transition uh knowing the systems they currently use now will never be able to be reengineered to use Bib frame. Uh which you know, reminds me of my favorite, nice O standard Z 39.2. Uh you know, is there is the mark uh standard uh is there a better success story for library interoperability than that, you know, this has enabled uh you know, a world of copy cataloging bibliographic exchange uh that is universal among large and small libraries in all parts of the world. Um that I think is a, you know, is a, is a great story. Um You know, things like Z 39 50 that built on top of that. Yeah, that, that allows you to slap record from one place to another to use a technical term. Um And, and there are others that, that improve the ecosystem, but this one had, this one has built an ecosystem, right? Uh Libraries can depend on it. It had 40 years. I don't forget when it became a standard, but it's been a developing uh approach since the sixties, right. Yeah, absolutely. And uh you know, I kind of reminded of the X K CD cartoon about like, oh, we need one, we need a better one to fix all of the other problems and then we just end up with 13 more. Um So I, I, I'm, you know, confident that, you know, there will be mark systems just like there is AM radio and there is uh you know, there is still live theater. Um Let's see, what are the things that I didn't see in your report that um I'm kind of interested to hear your thoughts on is this notion that many organizations, many groups of organizations really are moving in the direction of collaborative collections development. And like there's networks, uh the big uh big 10 academic alliance comes to mind in their big collection, but there's a variety of other pilot type organizations working on collaborative work. Um to what extent do you think that there's going to be a need and a development for how organizations and institutions are gonna work together and have systems that talk to each other across those networks. And you know, what kind of systems development do you think is gonna be necessary over the next couple of years? Yeah. Well, good question. So when you think about libraries working together collaboratively, so the story of the last decade or so has been very large groups of libraries uh going in to buy uh library automation systems. Uh Collectively, they look at the University of California, California State System, California Community Colleges, you know, all the different statewide and regional consortium show where dozens if not hundreds of libraries are coming together to share systems. Why are they doing that? Well, one may be the the cheaper per system per library to to do it that way. But more importantly is that enables collaboration in a way that just can't be accomplished if all of these libraries continue to have separate systems. So you know, you how, how do you do, how do, how do you collaborate to do technical services? You know, you have options when you're sharing a system instead of every library having to do uh their own. Uh And then on collection development, you can get kind of the whole view of what all the libraries in the in the consortium or whatever the collective is to know what I should buy and not buy because I can easily see what's already there. Um And then depending on the organization and a more strategic uh emphasis on uh collaborative collection development, I think that is a uh reality that is now possible that was much harder to do a few years ago. Uh You know, I remember talking with a couple of libraries where they really wanted to partner and, and do collaborative collection development will do this, you do that but they had separate systems. So operationally, it was really hard to do. So I think we're to the point now is that with your, with when you're within one of these resource sharing networks, it's pretty easy to do collaborative work, but it's harder when you're working outside that network. You know, if you're not, you know, like the big 10, they don't share an I L S, it's different partners using uh different systems. So you know, how do you kind of sit on top of that layer in order to be able to uh do uh data, you know, big data and uh collection analysis and analytics and so forth to then drive those collaborative decisions. So uh I think that's kind of the the the next layer of things is that, you know, you can do analytics within a a shared system. But how do you move beyond the shared system to to do that? So, um I mean, yeah, I mean that August and you know, it is a good argument for everyone just running the same system. Um And it works when everyone's running Alma, for example. Um or, you know, but, or using, you know, world for your collections assessment type work. Uh I'm wondering though, as if we're, if we're maybe if, if we're thinking that things like the open source community has kind of hit a tipping point and will, you know, maybe not hockey stick growth but expand its presence in the marketplace where, what you've just described is an ecosystem where everyone's running the same system. If more people start using different systems. Um you know, for whatever reason, individually deciding, you know, we're not going to use this system, we're gonna use that system. Um or, you know, the, the public libraries in our consortium use this system and the academics use that system does at that collaboration infrastructure layer starts to break down. Um you know, if you're, if you're not using the same system, we need interoperability. Yeah, I think there's some organization that specializes in that the operability and standards to, to do that. So, uh right, I mean, there are lots of opportunities within states and consortia that, yeah, it makes sense. I'll get the same system, you know, you get efficiency. Uh you know, that, that is a proven model that, that, you know, has been working well for, for, for decades and with, you know, world share and uh management services in Alma, you know, a lot more in the last decade. Uh But it's not the whole story, as you say, there, there will be lots of scenarios where you need to be able to do that across uh libraries that have participated in different things. So, uh you know, how do you do the, the analytics and, and all of that, that you need to get out of these different systems in order to be able to inform those within each of those systems uh about their collection strategies and, and all of that. Uh and it's uh complex because it's increasingly about their electronic resources and subscriptions and how open access happens and, and all of that kind of thing, you know, especially in academic libraries, kind of the the monographs that all of these libraries are buying is pretty small compared to, to everything else. So then how you know, the complexity of analyzing each of these libraries, collections of, of electronic and digital and print resources is it's a big job. Yeah, I mean, I guess where I'm at least personally, I kind of see it growing a potential problem of the lack of interoperability between these systems. And you start getting pools of communities that, you know, for, for a variety of reasons, you have a large academic institutions whose systems are built around bip frame and they only interoperate with themselves, you know, like like minded institutions or like resourced institutions. Um And then you have like a different tier of mid size institutions that maybe, maybe bib frame, maybe not, maybe, uh you know, running a shared infrastructure and then you have say other public libraries or school libraries or special libraries who are all running their own slimmed down mark based um systems and, and there's no real exchange or communication between them unless it really has to be. And then it's really expensive because, you know, we don't talk with those people over there. Well, fortunately most of the systems have API s of some sort and the bigger the system, the richer, the API uh but that's different than standards you can count on, right?
Somebody's going to have to do some abstraction and, and those kind of things in order to, you know, fully interoperate among the diverse systems you just described.
So it is kind of the uh ongoing story of what the labor technology industry has been trying to do uh since its beginnings, how do you get systems to talk to each other?
But now it's a, you know, the, the day to day operational things are more of a given, but it's kind of these new questions that we're that we're asking, how do you do highly efficient resource sharing?
How do you uh think about collaborative collection uh development and, and other kinds of things that are kind of beyond kind of day to day operations of libraries and their, and their consortia?
Mhm. All right. Well, Marshall this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Uh I really appreciate your insight and all of your uh you know, the, the the lens that you have on, on our community and the, and the players here.
Uh This has been a great conversation so we could find some time to talk. Yeah, it's been fun for me too. These are things I love to talk about.