The web-scale library – a global approach

Marshall Breeding
Vanderbilt University

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One of the main vectors of change in library automation involves the emergence of a new slate of products that move libraries away from locally housed systems to global platforms. These new Library Services Platforms offer libraries an opportunity to operate less in self-contained silos of data and functionality, but rather to work in broad Web-scale environments of highly shared data, unified workflows across the physical, digital, and electronic materials that comprise their collections. Discovery services have led the way toward this Web-scale approach and now library management is travelling a similar path. Breeding will present a conceptual overview of this new model of library automation and a practical update on the products and services within this new genre and their current status of development or deployment.

MARSHALL BREEDING serves as the Director for Innovative Technologies and Research for the Vanderbilt University Library in Nashville, TN and is the Executive Director of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. Marshall is a speaker, writer, and consultant. He is the creator and editor of Library Technology Guides (www.librarytechnology.org) and the lib-web-cats online directory of libraries on the Web. His monthly column, ‘Systems Librarian’, appears in Computers in Libraries; he is the Editor for Smart Libraries Newsletter published by the American Library Association, and has authored the annual ‘Automation Marketplace’ feature published by Library Journal since 2002. He has authored nine issues of ALA’s Library Technology Reports, and has written many other articles and book chapters. Marshall has edited or authored six books. He regularly teaches workshops and gives presentations at library conferences throughout the United States and internationally on a wide range of topics. He was the 2010 recipient of the LITA LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Outstanding Communication for Continuing Education in Library and Information Science. For more details see: www.librarytechnology.org/resume.pl.