Library Automation - past and present

What struck me most strongly while reading Clifford Lynch's From automation to transformation: Forty years of libraries and information technology in higher education was that it was written in 2000, but could easily have been written in 2010.  Having worked in library technical services in various capacities, starting in the mid-1980's as a student assistant in Cataloging, I recognized and experienced the trends and changes the article so accurately describes.  But what fascinates me is how much of that "present state" from 2000 is still the case today, and how many of those predictions are still issues libraries are grappling with.  With all that change mapped out since the 1960's, how is that so little was different even 10 years after this article was written?

My personal, admittedly biased and perhaps ill-informed, opinion is that several factors apply.  The year the article was written, 2000, fell in the middle of period of major changes to desktop hardware, subscription models, and OPAC software.  The years since have perhaps been a time of stabilization and more incremental change.  The other possibility is simply that digitization on this scale is unprecedented and difficult, time-consuming and expensive, confusing and scary.  It's taken a while, perhaps longer than expected, for library systems and library users to catch up to what is now possible.

However, I think we are again on the brink of changes.  Last year, my library spent more on e-books than on print monographs for the first time.  Print journal subscriptions are reduced to popular reading and niche disciplines, and we are withdrawing print journal runs at an astonishing pace.  Libraries are de-emphasizing their OPACs in favor of web-scale discovery systems, and a whole new generation of Library Management Systems are under development, under consideration, or in implementation.  Open Access is a disruptive force in scholarly publishing.  Many of the concerns Lynch mentions are finally being addressed, or at least discussed, including resource sharing in a digital world, access versus ownership of resources, digital preservation, and copyright issues.  I think the next few years will be challenging, and interesting!