CURRENT AND FUTURE TRENDS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR INFORMATION UNITS

With the increasing dominance of electronic content and digital collections in academic libraries, the capabilities lacking in the current slate of automation systems has increasingly become an obstacle to progress. A new generation of digital services platforms for libraries is emerging, designed to provide a more comprehensive approach to the management and access to all formats of library materials: print, electronic and digital. These new systems involve a modernization of technology, embracing service-oriented architectures, availability for APIs to facilitate interoperability with external systems, support for task workflows more aligned with current operational realities, and more tightly coupled discovery interfaces that deliver access to library collections and services in a more unified and comprehensive manner. These new products, emerging in this era of cloud computing, have been designed for deployment through software as a service and rely on highly shared data models.