Con la fuerte irrupción de las bibliotecas en el acceso a los recursos electrónicos y la gestión de colecciones digitales, la oferta actual de sistemas de automatización se ha ido convirtiendo en un obstáculo para el progreso. Una nueva generación de plataformas de servicios digitales para bibliotecas está emergiendo, diseñada para proporcionar un apoyo integral para la gestión y el acceso de todos los formatos de materiales de la biblioteca: impresos, electrónicos y digitales. Estos nuevos sistemas implican una modernización de las arquitecturas orientadas a servicios, con un mayor desarrollo del concepto de “software como servicio” y de otros modelos basados en la “nube”.
With the increasing dominance of electronic content and digital collections in academic libraries, the capabilities lacking in the current slate of automation systems has increasingly become an obstacle to progress. A new generation of digital services platforms for libraries is emerging, designed to provide a more comprehensive approach to the management and access to all formats of library materials: print, electronic and digital. These new systems involve a modernization of tech-nology, embracing service-oriented architectures, availability for APIs to facilitate interoperability with external systems, support for task workflows more aligned with current operational realities, and more tightly coupled discovery interfaces that deliver access to library collections and services in a more unified and comprehensive manner. These new products, emerging in this era of cloud computing, have been designed for deployment through software as a service and rely on highly shared data models.