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Trending Upward

The Library Marketplace at the American Library Association’s 2023 Annual Conference and Exhibition, held June 22–27 in Chicago. Photo: Rebecca Lomax/American Libraries With 15,851 total registrants and nearly 600 vendors represented, the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2023 Annual Conference and Exhibition (June 22–27) in Chicago continued to make progress toward prepandemic attendance numbers. The Library […]

2023 Library Systems Report

Illustration: ©Good Studio/Adobe Stock In recent years, business acquisitions have brought high-stakes changes to the library technology industry, creating seismic shifts in the balance of power. But other events in 2022—primarily advances in open source software—have even bigger implications for the market. Although proprietary products continue to dominate, open source alternatives are becoming increasingly competitive. […]

A Marketplace of Ideas

Daphene Keys, public services librarian at Houston Community College, poses with the Baker & Taylor mascots. Photo: EPNAC The American Library Association’s (ALA) 2022 Annual Conference and Exhibition returned to Washington, D.C., June 23–28, and the mood in the exhibit hall was only slightly subdued compared with previous in-person conferences. This year’s attendance of just […]

2022 Library Systems Report

Illustration: Tom Deja 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 […]

2021 Library Systems Report

Illustration: Tom Deja 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 […]

2020 Library Systems Report

Photo illustration: © Dariusz Jarzabek/Adobe Stock (library); © nongkran_ch/Adobe Stock (circles) 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 […]