librarymanagementsystems2001-2005.docVIP

Library management systems 2001-2005 General overview This chapter follows on from one on library management systems (LMSs) written for British Librarianship 1991-2000. That chapter ended with an overview of library management systems (LMSs) of the late 1990s by Akeroyd who described some of the functionality required by future systems which included: the integration of multiple sources and systems, both of bibliographic information and the full-text of documents; the simplification of access to sources; the personalisation of systems; a change in the way that software is created and maintained. The period under review in this chapter, 2001-5, reveals a number of changes in the LMS marketplace. The annual commentary on the LMS marketplace carried out for the April 1st issue of Library Journal gives a US perspective – which in many ways can be used to indicate trends in the period on this side of the ‘pond’ too. In 2002, for instance, Breeding noted that a small number of ever-expanding companies controlled the greatest share of the LMS market. OPACs were being developed to form ‘information portals’ to provide access to more content than basic bibliographic records (e.g. displaying book jacket images, providing access to tables of contents, abstracts, and reviews). A linked development involved allowing users to search across several information sources simultaneously. This technique became known as metasearching, or federated searching, with the resulting set of ‘hits’ presented to a user being usually sorted with duplicates (if able to be identified successfully) removed. Some LMS companies developed their own software for this, for instance Ex Libris’ MetaLib product, whereas as others bought in the technology from others, such as MuseGlobal and WebFeat. A key standard used in metasearching is that of the OpenURL. Zhu provided an overview of the development of the OpenURL and its impact on library services. In 2003, Breeding and Roddy described