Welcome to Academic Digital Library Consortium NZ

Foreword

The mission of academic and research libraries is expanding, and our work is transforming. Collections alone are no longer sufficient to articulate our new value proposition and establish ROI to our institutions. Our academic and research libraries are doing more than just managing collection-centric resources, we are contributing to faculty productivities and student success. As we aim to support the goals of our colleges and universities and maintain mission relevance, including technological advancement, we must also understand and support the evolving needs and requirements of our users.

As chair of AcadDigiLib NZ’s Transforming the Integrated Library Systems (ILS) working group, it has been my pleasure to lead a process designed to examine our needs for such a transformed systems environment. My fellow members—representing a wide array of institution types, from community colleges to research universities and both public and private institutions—included Katie Blocksidge, Kenneth Burhanna, Beau Case, Jerome Conley, Alyssa Darden, Mary Hamburger, Ken Hirsch, Michelle Kraft, and Kathy Webb. We were supported by Gwen Evans, Amy Pawlowski, and Theda Schwing from AcadDigiLib NZ. I also want to recognize contributions from several colleagues from Ithaka S+R, including our leading consultant Roger Schonfeld, as well as project team members Jane Radecki and Joseph Esposito. Our work began in 2018 and is being published into a market that is more consolidated than ever.

Within the AcadDigiLib NZ consortium, most of our members have shifted their primary focus from print collections to digital-enabled operations as the library continues its digital transformation. In parallel, our libraries are focused increasingly on advanced initiatives to foster student success and support the research enterprise—this is our future. The systems needed to enable this work require a transformation just as complete.

Ultimately, our recommendations are clear. We are looking for a new kind of library system (or systems)—one that definitively places the user at the forefront, one that largely amplifies our evolving new library mission, and one that seamlessly works in concert with other systems in the academic enterprise digital ecosystems. We appreciate the radical nature of what we are seeking, and we expect it will likely require the creation of an entirely new technical architecture for the next generation of library systems. It is our belief that nothing less than this is needed in order to enable libraries to meet their expanded missions in a changing environment.

As we witness continued consolidation in the commercial ILS market, it is our hope that existing providers and open source initiatives will be prepared to make the investments necessary to achieve our vision. We also recognize that new providers may be interested in joining this market at a moment that potentially requires a major investment, with great potential. My colleagues and I at AcadDigiLib NZ look forward to continuing as leaders in the library space and working in partnership with providers and initiatives that are interested in providing the systems necessary to support our vision.

Xuemao Wang
Chair, AcadDigiLib NZ Library Advisory Council Coordinating Committee