This collection of insights from library technology guru Lorcan Dempsey offers readers valuable reflections on emerging trends and key areas of concern as well as a visionary approach to libraries' future. Over the last decade, Dempsey's writing has covered diverse and wide ranging topics including the evolution of libraries, from how library organization, services and technologies are co-evolving with the behaviours of their users to support their changing research and learning needs, to how the curatorial traditions of archives, libraries and museums have come together in the digital environment. This selection of posts, originally from Dempsey's blog, has been expertly curated by Kenneth J Varnum to showcase Dempsey's dual ability to firstly explore an issue and then to reveal the higher-order trends. Using this method, Dempsey provides his incisive perspective on where libraries have been in the last decade as well as his prescient insights into future trends and directions. The book is organised into 9 topical chapters: * Networked resources * Network organization * The research process and libraries' evolving role * Resource discovery * Library systems and tools such as search indices and OpenURL link resolvers * Data and metadata * Publishing and communication, including blogs, social media, and scholarly communication * Libraries, archives, museums, and galleries as 'memory institutions'. Readership: The book concludes with a selection of favourites hand-picked by Dempsey himself and will be essential reading for students, library strategists, administrators, technology staff and anyone with an interest in the future of libraries.

We're in a new age of Discovery. Not of the physical world but rather one that serves up appropriate resources for your library's researchers, thanks to advancements in handling metadata, natural language processing, and keyword searching. For you, Discovery might be shorthand for single-index products such as Serials' Solutions Summon, EBSCO Discovery, and OCLC's WorldCat Discovery. Yet even those tools require adjustments to meet your institution's specific needs. With first-hand profiles of 19 library projects, Varnum and his roster of contributors offer guidance on the complete range of discovery services, from the broad sweep of vendors' products to the fine points of specialized holdings. Topics include: migrating from a traditional ILS to a library services platform creating a task list for usability testing of discovery managing internal development requirements within the constraints of a small or mid-sized library applying agile software methodology to a Blacklight implementation real-world examples of usability testing, including a small liberal arts college's implementation of VuFind meeting the challenge of three different metadata formats practices in the Primo community for integrating open access content into the front end serving mobile users with an app and responsive Web design analyzing the use of facets in search using a single discovery tool across a library, museum, and archive; and implementing discovery with geospatial datasets. Easy to dip into as needed, this comprehensive examination of discovery services will prove invaluable to IT, web development, electronic resource management, and technical services staff.

The time is right for this all-new survey of the library technology that's already transitioning from trend to everyday reality. As in the previous best-selling volume, Varnum and his contributors throw the spotlight on the systems, software, and approaches most crucial to the knowledge institutions of tomorrow. Inside, readers will find concise information and analysis on topics such as mobile technologies; privacy-protection technology tools; the Internet of Things (IoT); virtual reality; bots and automation; machine learning applications for libraries; libraries as digital humanities enablers; visualizations in discovery systems; linked open data; embeddedness and Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI); special collections and digital publishing; link rot, web archiving, and the future of the Distributed Web; and digital repositories. Sure to spark discussions about library innovation, this collection is a must have for staff interested in technology or involved with strategic planning.