Libraries in the Cloud Marshall Breeding Independent Consultant, Author, Founder and Publisher, Library Technology Guides February 19, 2015 Future Tech Strategies for Libraries

Cloud Computing for Libraries  Volume 11 in The Tech Set  Published by Neal- Schuman / ALA TechSource  ISBN:  Book ImagePublication Info:

Local Computing  Traditional model  Locally owned and managed  Shifting from departmental to enterprise  Departmental servers co-located in central IT data centers  Increasingly virtualized

Fundamental technology shift  Mainframe computing  Client/Server  Web-based and Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing  Major trend in Information Technology  Term “in the cloud” has devolved into marketing hype, but cloud computing in the form of multi- tenant software as a service offers libraries opportunities to break out of individual silos of automation and engage in widely shared cooperative systems  Opportunities for libraries to leverage their combined efforts into large-scale systems with more end-user impact and organizational efficiencies

Cloud computing – characteristics  Web-based Interfaces  Externally hosted  Pricing: subscription or utility  Highly abstracted computing model  Provisioned on demand  Scaled according to variable needs  Elastic – consumption of resources can contract and expand according to demand

ASP / Server Hosting / Co-location  Vendor hosting of server associated with single- instance system  Each instance separately installed and configured  Often deployed on virtualized servers  Client/server systems may require installation of client software on staff workstations

Multi-tenant SaaS  One Instance serves all users of the service (institutional or Individual)  Supports institutional or individual partitioning of functionality  Supports shared data access as needed  Fixes and features deployed once for all users  Web-based interfaces, no workstation clients

Benefits of Cloud Computing  Elimination of capital expenses for equipment  Lower annual costs  Redeployment of technical staff to more meaningful activities  Higher revenues relative to software-only arrangements  Provision of infrastructure at scale with lower unit costs  Longer-term relationships with customers Libraries Providers / Vendors

Cost implications  Total cost of ownership  Do all cost components result in increased or decreased expense  Personnel costs – need less technical administration  Hardware – server hardware eliminated  Software costs: subscription, license, maintenance/support  Indirect costs: energy costs associated with power and cooling of servers in data center  IaaS: balance elimination of hardware investments for ongoing usage fees  Especially attractive for development and prototyping

Budget Allocations  Server Purchase  Server Maintenance  Application software license  Data Center overhead  Energy costs  Facility costs  Annual Subscription  Measured Service?  Fixed fees  Factors  Hosting  Software Licenses  Optional modules Local ComputingCloud Computing

Risks and concerns  Privacy of data  Policies, regulations, jurisdictions  Ownership of data  Avoid vendor lock-in  Integrity of Data  Backups and disaster recovery

Caveats and concerns with SaaS  Libraries must have adequate bandwidth to support access to remote applications without latency  Quality of service agreements that guarantee performance and reliability factors  Configurability and customizability limitations  Access to API’s  Ability to interoperate with 3 rd party applications  Eg: Connect SaaS ILS with discovery product from another vendor

Security issues  Most providers implement stronger safeguards beyond the capacity of local institutions  Virtual instances equally susceptible to poor security practices as local computing

Data as a service  SaaS provides opportunity for highly shared data models  Bibliographic knowledgebase: one globally shared copy that serves all libraries  Discovery indexes: article and object-level index for resource discovery  E-resource knowledge bases: shared authoritative repository of e-journal holdings  General opportunity to move away from library-by- library metadata management to globally shared workflows

More than a technical transition  Transforming infrastructure  Transform resources  Working toward shared infrastructure  Identify areas where libraries can collaborate to share resources  Infrastructure transformation  Bandwidth  Shared services  Refocus development from stand-alone applications to platforms  Platform development  APIs that allow individual libraries or campuses to consume content or services according to local needs

Leveraging the Cloud  Moving legacy systems to hosted services provides some savings to individual institutions but does not result in dramatic transformation  Globally shared data and metadata models have the potential to achieve new levels of operational efficiencies and more powerful discovery and automation scenarios that improve the position of libraries overall.

Move up the technology stack  Infrastructure  General support  Library-specific support  Utility programming  Application programming  Strategic technology planning  Creative innovation

SaaS: New financial model  A software-as-a-service (SaaS) economy model trades higher upfront costs, incurred by libraries for equipment and software licenses, for a comprehensive annual subscription fee.

SaaS: Efficient model of computing  Leveraging economies of scale, SaaS providers have the potential to enable savings for libraries over time compared with direct and indirect costs of maintaining local servers and related infrastructure.

Saas: Library Adoption  Newer products … come only via SaaS. Even for server-based integrated library systems, libraries increasingly opt for hosted options as they acquire new products, instead of replacing outdated equipment underlying existing installations.

Support for Collaborative Infrastructure

Large-scale Implementations  Scale of any given project is no longer limited  Multi-tenant systems are already supporting very large numbers of sites  Shared implementation does not necessarily require more resources than separate ones

Benefits of shared infrastructure  Increased cooperation and resource sharing  Collaborative collection management  Lower costs per institution  Greater universe of content readily available to patrons  Avoid add-on components for union catalog and resource requests and routing

Orbis Cascade Alliance  37 Academic Libraries  Combined enrollment of 258,000  9 million titles  1997: implemented dual INN-Reach systems  Orbis and Cascade consortia merged in 2003  Moved from INN-Reach to OCLC Navigator / VDX in 2008  Current strategy to move to shared LMS based on Ex Libris Alma

South Australia SA Public Library Network 140 Public Libraries

Northern Ireland  Recently consolidated from 4 regional networks into one  96 branch libraries  18 mobile libraries  Collections managed through single Axiell OpenGalaxy LMS

Norway: BIBSYS  Provides automation services for:  National Library of Norway  105 Academic and Special Libraries  History of local system development  Originally selected WorldShare Platform for new generation system development (Nov 2010) and later withdrew (Oct 2012)  Primo implemented for Discovery (May 2013)  Alma selected for new shared infrastructure (Jan 2014)

WHELF Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum Institution Prior ILSBib Records Aberystwyth UniversityVoyager677,846 Bangor & Glyndwr UniversitySierra 591,673 Cardiff University & Welsh National Health ServiceVoyager856,381 Cardiff Metropolitan UniversityAlto269,965 National Library of WalesVirtua6,643,696 Royal Welsh College of Music and DramaVoyager 53,544 Swansea UniversityVoyager 738,399 University of South WalesSymphony365,602 University of Wales Trinity St. DavidHorizon637,326 Total 10,834,432

Orbis Cascade Alliance Campus Libraries37 Aggregated Enrollment258,000 Total Titles9 million Total Items28 million

California State University Institution TitlesVolumes CirculationStaff FTE Bakersfield 473,134637,60615,71425 Channel Islands 100,433255, Chico 850,0001,265,90732,18259 Dominguez Hills 628,193637,0648,45638 East Bay 944,4151,139,05733,49143 Fresno 1,928,6241,345,398208,49178 Fullerton 1,153,7141,256,86761,48674 Humboldt 692,017807,10130,30031 Long Beach 1,198,7883,073,252147,46168 Los Angeles 926,498983,22935,66548 Maritime Academy 42,854154,8205,4398 Monterey Bay 277,228333,98227,76816 Northridge 1,575,6952,170,589130, Pomona 776,2511,058,23643,51448 Sacramento 1,189,0931,415,56298,67566 San Bernardino 935,366868,45329,00190 San Diego 2,340,6412,513,98446, San Francisco 1,524,4641,677,43789,16189 San Jose 1,505,6761,441,27994,74588 San Luis Obispo 805,508724,53138,89562 San Marcos 441,812538,20317,07147 Sonoma 506,040585,082191,18734 Stanislaus 344,311513,56531,61127 Total 21,160,75525,396,7981,417,0371,307

University of California Campus Libraries10 Aggregated Enrollment 238,686 Total Titles38 million Total Items45 million The University of California system is in an earlier stage of consideration regarding the possibility of a shared resource management system..

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