Marshall Breeding har publicerat sin Library Systems Report för 2024 i American Libraries Magazine.
Citat om de tre leverantörer av proprietära system som är aktuella för svenska folkbibliotek:
Axiell
"Axiell, one of the largest companies in the global library technology space, has grown over the last three decades through business acquisitions and organic product development. Based in Lund, Sweden, the company does business throughout Scandinavia and other parts of Europe and offers multiple ILS products. Axiell employs 415 people, an increase of 44 staffers from 2022.
Effective January 1, Maria Wasing was promoted to president and CEO of Axiell Group; Joel Sommerfeldt, former president and CEO, is now chairman of the board. Henrik Béen joined the company last October as chief product officer. In 2023, Axiell agreed to sell its media division—which provides ebooks and other digital content to libraries in Sweden and Finland—to Nordic distributor Publizon.
Axiell’s LSP for public libraries, Quria, saw its first implementation in 2017 and continues to gain customers. Ninety-five libraries signed contracts for Quria last year, bringing total installations to 178. Libraries using Quria include Bibliotek Familjen Helsingborg, which spans 11 municipalities in Sweden, and the Bochum City Library, the first installation in Germany.
Axiell continues to expand in the UK. Libraries NI, which includes all public libraries in Northern Ireland, completed its migration to OpenGalaxy, another strategic ILS from Axiell. The East Midlands Libraries Consortium, which represents more than 200 library locations, also selected OpenGalaxy in 2023."
Innovative
"Innovative, also part of Clarivate, positions the Polaris ILS as its strategic product for public libraries. The brand’s Sierra ILS, still used by many academic libraries, continues to be supported but is not actively marketed for new sales. Last year, Innovative completed versions 6.0 and 6.1 of Sierra, which includes Security Assertion Markup Language and multifactor authentication features. Many libraries using the Sierra ILS are opting to move to the Alma LSP—among them, OhioLINK, Middlebury (Vt.) College, and University of San Diego—reflecting a larger trend of academic libraries moving toward LSPs.
Under Clarivate, Innovative has expanded globally. Prior to 2022, Polaris was marketed exclusively in North America. That year, Newcastle Libraries in Australia selected Polaris, marking the company’s first sale outside the continent. In 2023, the Central Coast Council Library Service, also in New South Wales, became the second Australian library to select Polaris. In a complex implementation, Singapore’s National Library Board implemented Polaris and Vega Discover for its network of 28 libraries, including the flagship National Library of Singapore.
Innovative has strengthened its offerings for public libraries—and its competitive position—through the development of Vega, a suite of customer-facing applications interoperable with Sierra and Polaris. The company is also working to modernize its INN-Reach direct consortial borrowing environment, a longstanding product for resource sharing within and between large consortia."
Systematic
"Systematic is an outlier. Its ILS, now known as Cicero, hit the market only eight years ago and is currently used in 3,047 libraries. Though the product is new, the company isn’t. Founded in 1985, Systematic is a global developer of enterprise software for multiple industries."
"Systematic is a large information technology company that operates across many sectors. Its Library and Learning division developed the Cicero ILS, originally created to provide a common automation system for all public and school libraries in Denmark. At 2,428 installations, this shared implementation is widely considered the largest single implementation of a library management system in the world.
[Uppdatering 2025-02-15: Ett exempel på sektorer Systematic är verksamma inom är
krigsmateriel.]
In March 2023, the public library system of Oslo, Norway, completed its migration to Cicero, and another nearly 100 municipalities in Norway have signed contracts to implement the platform. Altogether, Systematic signed 160 contracts for Cicero in 2023, spanning 543 library locations. Systematic reported 3,047 total installations of Cicero, an impressive figure for a product that saw its first implementation only eight years ago. The platform seems well positioned for further global expansion."
Att,
som jag gjort, enbart titta på antal kommuner som använder ett visst bibliotekssystem räcker inte för att bedöma en leverantörs storlek. Av leverantörerna ovan är Systematic intressant eftersom de är verksamma inom många olika brancher.
