Library automation market is tracking big IT vendors. OCLC PICA says IT-aware universities are driving collaboration and consolidation.

Byline: Mark Chillingworth.

Pressure from university IT departments is driving the development and adoption of library automation (LA) tools, and fuelling the current spate of mergers and acquisitions in the LA market.

That was the view of Dr Rein van Charldorp, managing director of OCLC PICA, which recently acquired Fretwell Downing Informatics (FDI). "The academic market is integrating its technology. As customers they are becoming very demanding."

From his Netherlands base, Charldorp has a European wide view of the changing academic information landscape, and he sees a continent-wide pattern emerging. Currently, different faculties have their own library and technology systems, but as universities become more competitive and business minded, they are moving over to business-wide applications such as the enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications offered by IT giants like IBM, SAP and Oracle. Charldorp said library automation applications have to integrate with these ERP systems.

"Students want a portal with access to their professors, eateries, e-learning environments and the library," he said. "Ultimately, the university and the IT department will set the infrastructure for the institute, and information professionals must chose systems that ...