Survey of Academic Library Information Technology Leadership: the LMS, Discovery & Automation, ISBN 979-8-88517-368-1
September 5, 2026
A new report released today, Survey of Academic Library Technology Leadership: The LMS, Discovery & Automation, presents a detailed national portrait of how academic libraries are managing their core systems and emerging automation tools. The study draws on responses from 33 academic libraries, predominantly in the United States, with results analyzed across institutional size, type, tuition band, Carnegie classification, and leadership role.
LMS Consolidation and High Satisfaction
The survey finds strong stability in the library management system landscape. Alma/Primo is the dominant platform, used by 51.52% of institutions, with expected adoption rising to 60.61% over the next three years. FOLIO shows modest growth, while Sierra and Voyager continue to decline. Nearly 73% of respondents are satisfied or very satisfied with their current LMS, and 70% do not anticipate migrating within five years.
Integration Burdens and Discovery Friction
Despite overall stability, integrations remain a significant operational challenge. A combined 60.60% of respondents rate integration maintenance as high or moderate effort, especially at larger institutions and research universities. Discovery layer friction is also common: broken links and search relevance issues affect more than half of libraries, making them the most persistent discovery problems reported.
Staffing and Customization Patterns
Only one third of institutions maintain a dedicated systems integration specialist, though combined dedicated/shared capacity rises to nearly 90% among the largest institutions. Discovery interface customization is widespread, with 69.70% of libraries customizing periodically or continuously.
Cautious AI Adoption
AI driven features have yet to gain broad traction. Two thirds of respondents are neutral about AI integration in their LMS, and 81.81% report rare, no, or uncertain use of AI enhanced metadata creation tools. Views on AI generated article summaries are mixed: 48.48% find them at least somewhat valuable, while an equal share is skeptical.
Leadership Perspectives
Open ended comments highlight recurring challenges in system migrations, including underestimated staffing needs, data quality issues, and coordination gaps with vendors and partner institutions. Leaders also call for standardized APIs, vendor maintained connectors, better link diagnostics, and more intuitive interfaces to reduce integration burdens.
The full report is available beginning September 5, 2026 and is priced at $109 for print or PDF versions; site licenses are also available
James Moses, Research Director
Primary Research Group Inc.
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