Moving to the Next‐Generation System: A Case History of a Vendor's Approach

Abstract

In 1983, Utlas International, a major bibliographic utility and a vendor of a range of automated services and systems for the library community, reached a point in its corporate development where massive technological change was unavoidable. Feuer details the procedures adopted by Utlas to migrate to a next‐generation system. The process involved three major stages: planning, system conversion, and implementation. He notes techniques employed to keep sub‐tasks manageable, to maintain a schedule, to instill a sense of accomplishment in staff members, to facilitate communications among project teams and all individual staff members, and to extract that most necessary and elusive component of a major development effort—documentation. The experiences in this case study are relevant to libraries that are implementing new systems, and particularly to those libraries that are migrating to next‐generation technologies.

Citation

Feuer, S. (1990), "Moving to the Next‐Generation System: A Case History of a Vendor's Approach", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 57-63. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb047782