Managing Electronic Resources in Today's ILMS Environment

Presented at Library of Congress, "LC's Digital Future and You", March 13, 2003The integrated library management system (ILMS) has been the traditional electronic tool libraries have used to track and provide access to selected resources. As collections move increasingly from print to electronic, this tool, and the library?s internal processes, are being challenged in new ways to provide comprehensive, integrated, accurate, timely, and user-accessible information on these resources in an efficient manner. Coupled with the blurring distinction between the ILMS and evolving Digital Library systems and tools, today?s environment and choices are becoming increasingly complex. This presentation will attempt to help identify the range of issues involved and determine appropriate choices. Given the rate of change in systems development, the presentation will focus on potential approaches and system functionality trends rather than addressing specific vendor solutions in detail