Librarians are familiar with the single-line form, the consolidated index, which represents a very large portion of a library's print and online collection. Their end users are familiar with the idea of a single search across a comprehensive index that produces a large, relevancy-ranked results list. Even though most patrons would not recognize…

Backups are a modern fact of life. Every organization that has any kind of computing technology (and that is all of them these days) needs to back up its data in case of technological or user errors. Traditionally, large-scale backups have been done via an internal or external tape drive that takes magnetic tapes (minicassettes, essentially) and…

In 2011 the University of Wollongong Library undertook a significant review of its Resource Sharing services. This was prompted by constraints in the systems supporting this service, changes to the Library's key suppliers, Infotrieve Australia and the British Library Document Supply Service, and the need to deliver effective library services…

One of the toughest challenges in an academic library systems office is how to manage and present the extensive selection of electronic resources from a variety of vendors. At York College of Pennsylvania, the authors participated in an admissions-driven web revision cycle and used a campus-provided CMS for 8 years. During this time, they tried…

In a year when a difficult economy presented fewer opportunities for immediate gains, the major industry players have defined their business strategies with fundamentally different concepts of library automation. This is no longer an industry where companies compete on the basis of the best or the most features in similar products but one where…

First offered to public libraries in 2004, downloadable audiobooks have grown by leaps and bounds. According to the Audio Publishers Association, their sales today account for 21% of the spoken-word audio market. It hasn't been easy, however. WMA. DRM. MP3. AAC. File extensions small on letters but very big on consequences for librarians,…

In March 2007, SirsiDynix notified its Horizon and classic Dynix customers that it would not be releasing Horizon 8.0 in favor of developing its Unicorn software. As vice president/president-elect of SirsiDynix's Horizon/Dynix user group, the author was one of the first ones to be notified of this abrupt change in company strategy. The news sent…

This article is the fourth in a series of articles published annually by "Computers in Libraries" surveying integrated library systems and services (ILSs). The purpose of the annual survey is to enable comparison of the ILSs that are available. ILS vendors are in constant pursuit of an ever-changing, consistently vague definition of what the…

When the electronic resource management system (ERM) at Kansas State University Libraries suffered a horrible data loss, the "contract db" presented a challenge for the librarians responsible for electronic resources. It was a decent data repository, but it had no ability to manage the tangled process of licensing, acquiring, activating,…

Despite lower attendance than in the past and blustery, cold weather, the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting in Denver in January offered lots of news from industry vendors and lots of opportunities to discuss important issues and trends. In this report, the author highlights some of the most important product announcements with a…

Deciding whether to go with a particular open source product is an exercise in risk management: understanding the risks of one's possible actions and choices, calculating when a certain level of risk is appropriate to reach a desired outcome, and planning for how to handle negative outcomes. To be sure, opting to go with a particular proprietary…

Twenty-three scholarly papers and twelve abstracts comprise the content of the eleventh annual Brick and Click Libraries Symposium, held at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The peer-reviewed proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the symposium, portray the contemporary and future face of…