Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
While multi-tenant applications must have the ability to limit and segregate access to
data, they also come with the ability to share resources very broadly.
While some types of data must be confined within your own organization, there
are many areas where information can be shared to the broader community with great
mutual benefit. Such multi-tenant, or Web-scale infrastructure, allows libraries to
collaboratively build and share critical resources such as bibliographic services,
knowledge bases of e-resource coverage and holdings, or centralized article-level
discovery indexes.
These highly shared models of automation present many advantages over those
based on isolated local implementations of integrated library systems that build
individual silos of content. Cloud computing enables workflows that leverage the
cumulative efforts of librarians across many different organizations—or even regions
of the world—to collaboratively create resources with enormous mutual benefit.
These large collaboratively created resources not only allow libraries to operate more
efficiently, but this approach also provides ever larger pools of information resources
to library patrons and a foundation for resource sharing [3]. Local computing, in
contrast, tends to reinforce patterns where each library recreates data transactions
redundantly in isolation from their peers.
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Reshaping Library Organizations and Software Design
This new phase of technology provides the opportunity to develop new library
management applications, and to fundamentally re-think their organization and
design. The incumbent slate of integrated library systems (ILS) was designed when
libraries were involved almost exclusively with print collections.
The classic model of the ILS divides functionality into a standard set of modules
including circulation, cataloging, public catalog, serials management, acquisitions,
and authority control. Optional modules or add-ons may support reserve reading
collections or inter-library loans. Many libraries have structured their organizations in
a similar pattern. The transformation of libraries into organizations primarily involved
with electronic and digital materials brings the opportunity to reshape both their
technical and organizational infrastructure.
In the current model, libraries offer a fairly standard set of services, through desks
or offices dedicated to specific activities, most of which are oriented to physical
materials. A typical library operates a circulation desk for standard loans and returns
of topics available in the library, a reserve desk for short-term loans of materials set
aside for use in a specific course, inter-library loan to request items not owned by the
library. The legacy concepts of circulation, reserves, inter-library loan, branch
transfers and related activities may be better conceptualized today as resource
fulfillment.
The traditional ILS modules and service points organized around them in the
physical library can be reconsidered in favor of alternatives that provide a more
flexible service to library patrons. Automation systems likewise can be redesigned to
manage and provide access to library resources through workflows optimized for
modern multi-faceted collections and not constrained by the increasingly obsolete
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