Resource of the Week
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By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor
A colleague called me a couple weeks ago and said he had been asked to investigate integrated library systems. Where should he start looking for information? Now, it's been quite awhile since I've explored this topic myself, but I didn't hesitate for a minute to send him to this week's resource.
Library Automation--Hub
Source: Marshall Breeding, Director for Innovative Technologies and Research, Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University Library Technology Guides
I had the privilege of working near the brilliant and prolific Marshall Breeding during my abbreviated tenure at Vanderbilt. Perhaps I did not stay long enough for any of that brilliance to rub off on me, but to be blunt about it, I don't have to know everything Marshall knows because he makes so much of it available online, at this website. Library Technology Guides comprises several different databases, including libwebcats (directory of libraries worldwide), library companies (automation vendors), a news release archive (from automation vendors), and the modestly titled bibliography, which is an industrial strength databases that indexes "books, book chapters, and articles relevant to the discipline." Here's where you can go to find indexing for:
+ Journal of Library Automation (1968 - 1981)
+ Information Technology and Libraries (1982 - present)
+ Library Systems Newsletter (1981 - present)
+ Library Software Review (1990-1998)
+ D-Lib Magazine
+ Computers in Libraries
Marshall has written the Systems Librarian column for Computers in Libraries for many years and, on the Library Technology Guides home page, you'll find the full text of all of his columns back to January 2000. He also produces Library Journal's annual Automated Systems Marketplace overview, and you'll find links to these articles back to 2002.
If you register here (free), you'll receive notification of major new resources added to the site, as well as a monthly "listing of current news items in Library Automation." An RSS feed is available.
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