Given the recent spate of library system vendor acquisitions and consolidations, integrated library system (ILS) migrations have become a hot topic again. Although ILS migrations happen all the time, they tend to be cyclical in nature. Today, people are thinking broadly about what options might be available to them. These include changing vendors,…

This paper discusses the role of XML in library information systems at three major levels: as are presentation language that enables the transport of bibliographic data in a way that is technologically independent and universally understood across systems and domains; as a language that enables the specification of complex validation rules…

ERIC has evolved from a research database into a multi-faceted information system. At the heart of ERIC is the world's largest education database, providing abstracts of more than 850,000 journal articles and documents from a wide range of public and private sources. The system also features a variety of additional products and services designed…

A survey to discover what academic libraries were doing in the area of CD-ROM networking found that (1) all responding libraries utilized CD-ROM technology; (2) great diversity existed in the number of databases and workstation owned; (3) different staffing patterns exist between networked and nonnetworked libraries; and (4) 21 institutions had…

This report on some of the strategic planning decisions that OCLC has made for the 21st century begins by describing the evolution of OCLC from a pioneer in the computer revolution with its Online Union Catalog and Shared Cataloging System in 1971 to a system that currently has nearly 60 distinct offerings. Corresponding computer and…