Chapter 3. Industry Vendor Consolidation Study

This report documents the current state of consolidation in the library technology industry. Much of the revenue for core technology products is concentrated in few very large-scale organizations. The history of the industry is told in the rise and fall of companies and in the disposition of the products created. The life cycle of a product from launch, to general use in libraries, to a legacy status where new sales and installations decline, to eventual extinction is incredibly long. The emergence of a successful new product is a rare event.

In the context of ongoing industry consolidation, it is essential to be able to compare the competitive environment today to previous periods in the industry. Are fewer or more products available for libraries to choose from than in previous times? Are there fewer or more active vendors? To answer these questions regarding the competitiveness of the industry over time, an analysis was conducted using data from the libraries.org directory of libraries to measure the products implemented each year from 1990 through 2020 and the number of associated vendors. This study focused on academic libraries in the United States. The same methodology can be applied to other library sectors but would require the collection of additional data.

libraries.org

https://librarytechnology.org/libraries/

The key intent of the study lies in identifying the number of vendors and products active each year to be able to assess the relative levels of competition seen each year and to identify trends. These results and trends will provide important perspective on the degree of competition in today’s heavily consolidated industry.

Methodology

The libraries.org directory has been developed as a data repository for the study and analysis of the technology products used by libraries. A variety of reports and visualizations have been developed that illustrate trends related to technology products currently used in libraries and general migration patterns. This study approaches the data somewhat differently to understand the technology trends as they have developed over the last three decades. Each libraries.org entry includes the automation system used by the library and those used previously (table 3.1). The data for the current and past automation systems has been collected since the inception of the database in 1997. While unevenly available for many sets of libraries, this data is most accurate for academic and public libraries in the United States.

The fields for automation systems are structured in libraries.org to portray the sequence of technology products used by each library, as shown in table 3.2. This study focuses on the fields related to tracking the integrated library systems or library services platforms and their respective implementation dates (ILS, InstallDate, PreviousILS, PrevInstallDate, PreviousILS2, PrevInstallDate2, PreviousILS3, PrevInstallDate3, PreviousILS4, PrevInstallDate4). While this structure can display the sequence of systems used, it is not conducive to supporting queries related to the systems used in a given year.

To support analysis related to the systems used in past years, the system sequence data needed to be converted into an annual chronology. The script that performed this analysis, shown in figure 3.1, dynamically created a secondary table that converted the sequences to annual data from 1980 to the current year for each of libraries targeted by the query.

This study addresses the dynamics between the automation products and the vendors responsible for them. Do the patterns of expansion and consolidation of the products differ from those related to the vendors involved? A year-by-year record of what vendor was associated with each system represents another factor in the analysis. This information was encoded in a two-dimensional hash that can be used to return the vendor associated with a product for any year between 1990 and the present.

Analysis of Academic Libraries in the United States

The libraries.org directory includes 3,016 academic libraries in the United States. This is the number of academic library organizations and does not count individual branches. These libraries vary from large research universities to smaller four-year colleges and include community colleges and small religious institutions. They do not include for-profit educational institutions, which often do not have formal libraries.

In 2020, fifty-nine ILS products are used among US academic libraries:

• Alma (956)
• Sierra (395)
• WorldShare Management Services (321)
• Symphony (314)
• Koha—ByWater Solutions (133)
• Koha—Equinox Software (7)
• Koha—LibLime (22)
• Koha—Nucsoft (1)
• Library.Solution (67)
• Voyager (62)
• Polaris (47)
• Millennium (44)
• Horizon (42)
• Destiny (40)
• EOS.Web (39)
• VERSO (35)
• Atriuum (31)
• LibraryWorld (27)
• OPALS (26)
• ALEPH 500 (22)
• Evergreen—Independent (18)
• Koha—Independent (11)
• Evergreen—Equinox Software (8)
• CyberTools for Libraries (7)
• FOLIO—EBSCO Information Services (6)
• FOLIO—Index Data (5)
• FOLIO—ByWater Solutions (3)
• TIND ILS (4)
• Insignia (4)
• Kuali OLE (1)
• Liberty (1)
• Evolve (1)
• Colleague (1)
• Virtua (5)
• Spydus (1)
• Winnebago Spectrum (2)
• Small Library Organizer Pro (1)
• EOS e-Library Service (1)
• SA3000 (1)
• GLAS (1)
• Infocentre (1)
• Accessit Library (1)
• OpenBiblio (3)
• TinyCat (1)
• campusSIS (2)
• Locally developed (2)
• ResourceMate (3)
• Surpass (1)
• Bibliovation (2)
• Circulation Plus (1)
• Mandarin M3 (1)
• Mandarin Oasis (12)
• Mandarin M5 (9)
• Populi (7)
• Athena (1)
• OasisSIS—Library Module (3)
• Alexandria (9)
• Librarika (2)
• Mandarin (1)

These products are supported by a total of thirty-six vendors:

• ProQuest (1,531)
• SirsiDynix (397)
• OCLC (321)
• ByWater Solutions (136)
• The Library Corporation (67)
• Follett (45)
• Independent (35)
• Auto-Graphics (35)
• Book Systems (31)
• LibraryWorld (27)
• Media Flex (26)
• PTFS (24)
• Equinox (15)
• COMPanion Corporation (9)
• CyberTools (7)
• Populi (7)
• EBSCO Information Services (6)
• TIND (4)
• Index Data (5)
• Insignia Software (4)
• Softlink International (1)
• InfoVision Software (1)
• Ellucian (1)
• Civica (1)
• PrimaSoft PC, Inc. (1)
• Space Amazing (1)
• Accessit Library (1)
• LibraryThing (1)
• Nucsoft (1)
• Equinox Software (7)
• Kanopy Apps Technologies (2)
• Jaywil Software Development (3)
• Surpass Software (1)
• Mandarin Library Automation (23)
• Oasis Technologies (3)
• Librarika (2)

See tables 3.3 –3.8 for lists of systems and vendors and how they’ve changed over the years.

In 1990 the library technology was more fragmented, with forty-three vendors offering a total of fifty-four products. No single vendor was dominant across the entire US academic library sector. The most popular product, NOTIS, still under the ownership of NOTIS Systems, Inc., had been implemented by about 20 percent of libraries in this sector. No other product held more than 10 percent market share. DRA (9.7 percent), PALS (9.4 percent), Dynix (8.8 percent), and Innopac were other popular products. The other products were implemented in smaller numbers. Figure 3.2 shows the trend lines since 1990 in vendors and products.

Observations for US Academic Libraries

The data from this analysis reflects some interesting trends and enables us to make interesting observations regarding the vendors and automation products during the last three decades. Figure 3.2 highlights the consistent pattern of the number of products active each year exceeding the number of vendors. Throughout the entire period, there were vendors supporting multiple products, gained either via previous acquisition or through new generation offerings.

This view of the data indicates that despite the consolidation of the industry, the number of competitors active now is lower than some phases, but is not at its lowest point. The number of active vendors reached its lowest point in 2014 and has steadily increased since. Table 3.4 presents the products and vendors active in 2014.

Trends among the ARL Member Libraries

A data set of all academic libraries in the US represents a very broad group of libraries. Technology needs and favored products vary considerably for each tier of libraries organized by collection size, type of institution served, or other factors. Additional insight can be gained by looking at specific subsets. The members of the Association of Research Libraries constitute an important subset of academic libraries, representing those with the largest collections and most complex operations.

In 2020, among the 125 ARL members, thirteen different systems were in use or recently selected. Note that in the libraries.org database, new systems are recorded once the library has made a formal and binding selection, even if the system has not yet been placed into production. Table 3.9 presents the products currently in use.

Among this group, ProQuest holds an 84 percent market share, including the products within both Ex Libris (71.2 percent) and Innovative (13 percent).

It is also helpful to look at the implementation trends of the ARL members over time. One view of this trend was compiled by constructing a retrospective tabulation of system implementation statistics published on Library Technology Guides from the Internet Archive. The data is shown in table 3.10. A graphic representation of the system implementation trends is available on Library Technology Guides: https://librarytechnology.org/libraries/arl/ils-marketshare-trends.pl.

Library Technology Guides implementation statistics

https://librarytechnology.org/libraries/arl/ils.pl

Internet Archive

https://archive.org

Another view of the market share trends among ARL member libraries was created with the system data in libraries.org, using the same process as for the full US academic library group (described above). This analysis reveals that the period with the fewest active systems and vendors was from 2008 through 2011 (figure 3.3). Table 3.11 presents the active products and vendors in 2008.

Study Results

Based on data describing the products implemented in academic libraries since 1990, this analysis suggests that the library technology industry is more competitive today than it has been in previous phases. More products are active today, and they represent a more diverse profile of technology and business arrangements than in some previous periods.

Among the ARL members, products active today include proprietary library services platforms (Alma and WorldShare Management Services), open source library services platforms (FOLIO, Kuali OLE), and proprietary integrated library systems (Symphony, Sierra, Millennium, Polaris), as well as open source integrated library systems (Koha). Vendors include a nonprofit (OCLC) and several for-profit companies (ProQuest, EBSCO Information Services, SirsiDynix, and ByWater Solutions). By comparison, in 2009 all six active products were proprietary integrated library systems (Aleph, Voyager, Innopac, Millennium, Horizon, and Symphony), and all the vendors were for-profit (Innovative, SirsiDynix, and Ex Libris).

While consolidation has skewed the total number of implementations toward a lower number of vendors, the overall field of products and vendors is more diverse in 2020 than it was in 2009. The results of this analysis differ from an intuitive impression that the library technology industry has become less competitive in recent years.