(5 May 2026) Library Technology Guides has released the 2026 Library Systems Report, an in-depth analysis of the global library technology industry authored by Marshall Breeding. The new report examines how libraries and vendors are responding to a period defined by financial austerity, workforce pressures, and accelerating disruption driven by artificial intelligence (AI). While constrained…
(6 Aug 2025) The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has released the results of a 2024 survey on artificial intelligence in web-scale library discovery services. The report, titled ‘Generative Artificial Intelligence and the NISO Open Discovery Initiative,’ was developed by the NISO Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) Standing Committee. This publication follows the 2020 update of the ODI’s Recommended…
(19 May 2025) The International Survey of Library Automation provides a unique opportunity for libraries to evaluate their core technology systems, their associated vendors, and to offer their views on relevant topics and trends. This eighteenth edition of the survey received 2,531 responses. The 50,604 cumulative responses received since 2007 document interesting and important trends…
(1 May 2025) The library technology industry showed its maturity in 2024. Businesses have become increasingly stable and robust products delivered rich functionality. But decades of consolidation have created a narrower slate of competitors, resulting in a smaller number of products available for each type and size of library. The marketplace is seeing more specialized…
(1 May 2024) The library technology industry had a quiet year in 2023. But in the absence of major business moves and acquisitions, companies set their sights on executing strategies to strengthen their market position. Previous cycles of business consolidation have yielded a layered landscape with distinct levels of competition. At the top, a…
(16 May 2023) Andreas Mace, Systems Librarian at the National Library of Sweden, shares views on the 2 posts regarding the limitations of the unified vision for library systems, and also some loosely coupled software and services, that together create a modular library systems landscape. Part 1 can be found here. Part 2 can…
(2 May 2022) Events of the last year have reshaped the library technology industry. Previous rounds of acquisitions pale in comparison to the acquisition of ProQuest by Clarivate, which has propelled the leading library technology provider into the broader commercial sector of scholarly communications. This deal signals that the gap in size among vendors is…
New catalog information service corresponding to digital resources to be introduced from 2022 (7 Jul 2021) National Institute of Informatics (NII; Director General: Dr. KITSUREGAWA Masaru, Tokyo, Japan) has begun reconstruction of NACSIS-CAT/ILL, a catalog information service used by more than 1,300 institutions, mainly university libraries. This project is based on “The Vision on Future…
(3 May 2021) In a year complicated by a global pandemic, the community of vendors providing technologies to libraries made important strides to meet pressing needs and make ongoing progress in their longer-term initiatives. Though the pandemic disrupted library services—as well as funding—in 2020, concerted efforts were made to fulfill the demands of users to…
(1 May 2020) From the introduction: The library technology industry took some significant turns in 2019. Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, acquired Innovative Interfaces and shifted the balance of power, strengthening Ex Libris’s position in technology for academic libraries and propelling it as a major player in public libraries. This move narrows the slate of competitors in…