This issue of Library Technology Reports (vol. 56, no. 8) offers an in-depth analysis of the vendor and product environment in libraries over the past 30 years. Mergers and acquisitions have accelerated in the past decade, yet the pattern of maintaining products has nevertheless presented libraries with options and a competitive environment. The report draws extensively from data on vendors and product implementations.
Marshall Breeding serves as the Director for Innovative Technology and Research at the Vanderbilt University Libraries in Nashville, Tennessee. He has authored several previous Library Technology Report issues: “Electronic Security Strategies for Libraries,” “Strategies for Measuring and Implementing E-Use,” “Integrated Library Software: A Guide to Multiuser, Multifunction Systems,” “Wireless Networks in Libraries,” “Web Services and the Service-Oriented Architecture,” and “Open Source Integrated Library Systems.” Breeding is also a contributing editor to Smart Libraries Newsletter, published by ALA TechSource, and has authored the feature “Automated Systems Marketplace” for Library Journal for the last six years. His column “Systems Librarian” appears monthly in Computers in Libraries magazine.