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Corrigendum

It has come to our attention that the article “Opening libraries to cloud computing: a Kenyan perspective”, published in Library High Tech News, Vol. 32 No. 3, 2015 did not acknowledge the contributing author Lawrence Njoroge. This occurred through an author error. The authors sincerely apologise for this and correct author listing has now been added to the electronic version of the article.

Introduction

The National Institute of Standards and Technology defines cloud computing as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (such as networks, servers, storage facilities, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or with service provider interaction”. It is suffice to define cloud computing as an Internet technological innovation that provides a platform for massive information resource sharing, thus minimizing carbon footprints and making libraries greener (Goldner, 2010a, 2010b). Without knowing it, modern libraries are embracing new software and other related hosting services to provide innovative products and services for preserving intellectual efforts (Leckie and Buschman, 2010). These services may include Web application in social cataloging. Many studies show that libraries worldwide suffer related problems associated with inflexibility, inefficiency of digital data and high management costs of information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure. A major solution to this menace is incorporating cloud computing in library services. The purpose of this paper is to look specifically at how cloud computing can be used by libraries and what needs to be considered before embracing a cloud computing solution.

Framingham (2013) forecasts that worldwide spending on public information technology (IT) cloud services will reach $47.4 billion in 2013. The expenditure is expected to rise to more than $107 billion in 2017. According to a new forecast from the International Data Corporation, over the 2013-2017 forecast period, public IT cloud services will have a compound annual growth rate of 23.5 per cent, five times that of the IT industry as a whole. Das (2013) argues that cloud computing has five key principles:

  1. shared resources (including applications, processors, storage and databases);

  2. on-demand (users retrieve and use cloud information resources from the cloud);

  3. elasticity, flexibility and scalability (clouds are receptive to user needs);

  4. networked access (wide accessibility); and

  5. metering use...

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