Library Services Platforms: A Study of the Functional and Technical Requirements that must be Available to Meet the Needs of Arab Libraries

The information landscape has changed significantly and the forms of information resources that libraries deal with have evolved, as well as the methods of obtaining and managing them. With this change, many libraries have noticed that integrated library systems no longer meet their needs. It was necessary for library systems developers to develop their programs to show us library services platforms that aim to manage both printed and electronic resources, whether owned by the library or subscribed to, or freely available, in a comprehensive and unified manner through a single work platform. This new category of library technology products has become adopted by various libraries around the world. Therefore, this study aims to help Arab libraries when making a decision to replace their current systems with one of the library services platforms by providing a proposed guiding model that includes the technical and functional requirements that must be available in These platforms then help libraries to select and evaluate library service platforms available in the market, whether commercial or open source. The study relied on the descriptive approach with its survey method and content analysis method to prepare the proposed model, which included six main elements to determine the technical requirements, while the functional requirements clarified the tasks that the platform must perform to develop the performance of library operations and improve user experiences. The researcher divided them into basic functional requirements and additional functional requirements; the first included seven main elements, while additional functional requirements, included three main elements.