Small Library Tech Stack: What You Actually Need

A vendor sent you their 47-page technology roadmap. "Enterprise grade. Scalable for any library size." $75K/year. They watched your face as you read the price tag and said, "For a library your size, this is actually a steal." And somewhere in your head, a voice whispered: there's no way I can say no to enterprise grade.

That voice is wrong.

I've watched this play out in small libraries across three states. A library director gets pressured by a board member who read something about AI-driven patron engagement. A consultant gets brought in who defaults to what they know works for big systems. A vendor sees a mission-driven organization that doesn't have procurement expertise and leans on that hard. Within 18 months, the library is paying $50K/year for tools that two people know how to use, and the other three staff members have stopped trying.

Here's what nobody tells you: Small libraries and large ones live in completely different technology worlds. A system that makes sense for a 50-person academic library will absolutely kill a library with 2-3 staff. But vendors build for big institutions, shrink the package, and charge you $40K because they can. Because you sound grateful just for acknowledging the "small library market."

This is what actually works. Not what's impressive. Not what looks good on a five-year strategic plan. What works.

Why This Matters: The Vendor Math Problem

Here's the thing: A vendor built a system for 100+ library systems. It works great for them. They made their money. Now they want to serve "the small library market," so they remove features and... keep the price at $40K. Same support infrastructure, same licensing model, same profit margins. Why would they change it?

A small library director on a $200K budget sees $40K for a single system and panics. But the vendor has already shown you all the competitors cost the same. So you sign. Because not signing looks irresponsible.

I've watched three directors at different library systems each spend roughly $120K over three years on an ILS they never fully implemented because the UI was designed for librarians at universities, not at small libraries where the director does collection development and circulation work on the same day.

Open source alternatives exist. Community-supported solutions exist. You don't need 80% of what they're selling. You need what your patrons actually use and what your staff can actually support. The gap between those two things is where vendors live.

The Essentials: What You Actually Need

1. A Catalog System That Works

Your ILS is where the work happens. It's not a showpiece. It's the thing that has to let staff check books in and out without crashing at 3pm on a Saturday.

Your real options:

• Koha (Open Source, Free) – Used successfully in hundreds of small public libraries and some decent-sized academic ones. No licensing fees. You pay $3-5K/year for managed hosting if you don't want to run servers yourself. Learning curve exists, but so does a community that will help you. I've seen 2-person libraries run Koha after a 4-week implementation. It takes work, but they saved $40K/year and never looked back.
• Evergreen (Open Source, Free) – Built by consortia, for consortia. Works for single libraries too, but you'll be maintaining more infrastructure yourself. Similar cost model to Koha.
• A small proprietary system with real small library pricing – If you find one that charges $8-12K/year (not $35K), has actual local support, and doesn't make you implement their "complete platform," it might be worth it for the peace of mind. Ask them directly: "What's the real cost if we only implement the ILS?" If they won't give you a straight answer, walk.
• Avoid: Alma, Ex Libris, Worldcat Discovery. These are built for academic libraries with 50+ staff and $100K+ annual budgets. A small library using one of these is like a solo operator renting a 50,000 square foot warehouse. You'll pay for 95% of features you'll never use, support staff who don't understand your reality, and a migration that costs $30-50K when you finally realize the mistake.

The real conversation: If you're a 1-person operation and hate troubleshooting, yes, pay for a proprietary system with support. If you have 2-3 staff who can learn tools, Koha saves you $35-40K/year. If you have 1 person who knows tech, they can probably handle Koha with consultant help. If all your staff are afraid of anything technical, the proprietary option buys you peace but costs you flexibility and future independence.

2. Security That Actually Protects You (Non-Negotiable)

I'm about to tell you something that sounds scary, and I know you're thinking "we're a small library, why would anyone target us?" I get it. But ransomware doesn't discriminate. A small library in Wisconsin got hit in 2023, lost all their patron data, and paid $180K to recover. They were closed for eight weeks.

Security sounds expensive until you calculate what recovery costs.

• Backup system: Automated backups that run every night, tested monthly, with at least one offline copy (not in the cloud, actually offline). Budget: $2-4K/year. Yes, really. If you get hit with ransomware, this saves your library.
• Firewall: You probably already have one. It probably has default settings that are worse than useless. Spend 4 hours getting someone to configure it properly ($500-1K for a consultant to set it up once, then it just works).
• Multi-Factor Authentication: Free with systems you already use (Gmail, Microsoft). Turn it on for admin accounts today.
• Password manager: Bitwarden free tier is genuinely fine. Or $20/month total for a small team. Staff shouldn't share passwords written on sticky notes, and they shouldn't use the same password everywhere. A password manager makes this sane.
• Staff training: CISA has free phishing training. Spend 1 hour/year. That's it. Make it mandatory. Someone WILL click a suspicious link at some point, and that person needs to know how to report it.

Real budget: $3-5K/year. Ransomware recovery: $250K-$500K (and you're closed). A small library that got hit in 2021 didn't have backups and lost everything. The library closed permanently 18 months later. They couldn't recover from it.

Do not skip security. Do not assume "nobody would target us." Do not think backups are optional.

3. Ways to Actually Talk to Your Patrons

Your patrons need to know: new books arrived, you're closed for a snow day, their hold is ready, there's an event tonight. That's it. Vendors want to sell you a $12K multi-channel engagement platform that does A/B testing and behavioral analysis. You need email and a website.

• Email list: Mailchimp is free up to 500 contacts. You send an email. Patrons get it. It works. Some small libraries use Brevo or Substack. Pick one and move on. Cost: $0-50/month depending on size.
• Website: WordPress + a basic theme or a simple site builder. Not beautiful, but functional. Your website should let people search your catalog, see hours, and know how to reach you. That's all. WordPress works fine for this. Wix works fine. Don't spend $10K on a website redesign.
• Social media: Instagram and Facebook are free. Posting takes staff time. The person who does this should be someone who enjoys it, not someone it was assigned to. You'll get better reach with consistent, weird, personality-driven posts than with perfectly professional quarterly announcements.
• Skip: Multi-channel engagement platforms, behavioral analytics dashboards, automated message orchestration software. These are solutions to problems you don't have. When you actually need them (you won't, for years), you'll know.

Budget: $200-500/year, mostly if you pay someone to maintain the website. The time investment is real, but manageable. One staff person, 3-4 hours/week.

4. Keeping Your Staff From Getting Left Behind

Your staff needs to know what's changing in libraries, how other places solved problems, and what's coming. They don't need a $5K learning management platform designed for corporate onboarding.

• Library journal access: Your state library gives you free access to Library Journal, Library Media Connection, and some databases. Find out what you already have. Cost: $0.
• Webinars: ALA, your state library organization, and regional consortia host free or cheap sessions. Expect 2-3 good ones per quarter. Cost: $0-500/year if your director attends conferences.
• Local peer learning: Call the director of a library 15 miles away. Get coffee. Talk about what's broken, what works, how they solved the thing you're stuck on. This is how libraries actually learn. Cost: $0 and good conversation.
• Specific training for your chosen tech: If you pick Koha, budget $1-2K for a consultant to run a 2-day staff training. If you pick a proprietary system, they include training. Cost: included or $1-2K.
• Skip: Learning management systems, corporate training platforms, annual subscriptions to video training libraries. They sound professional. They're not worth it for a small team. Your staff needs time with the actual tools, not video courses about tools.

What Will Destroy Your Budget (Avoid Until You're Actually Drowning)

Vendors will try to sell you solutions to problems you don't have yet. Sometimes they'll tell you you're irresponsible for not having them. Ignore that. Here's what you're actually safe skipping:

What I've Actually Seen Work

Proprietary ILS vs. Koha: The Real Conversation

Real story: A library in Iowa paid $45K/year for a proprietary ILS for six years because leaving would cost $50K in migration and nobody wanted to be the director who "wasted" $270K. They weren't getting value anymore, but the exit cost was too high. A Koha installation would have cost them $40K upfront plus $5K/year. They'd be completely independent by now.

Another library chose Koha. Year one was harder. Year two, their circulation librarian could fix issues herself. Year three, they'd saved $100K and they weren't panicking about vendor price increases.

There's no wrong choice between these two, but you need to know which problem you're solving: "I don't have time to learn systems" (proprietary) or "I don't have money to burn" (Koha).

Expensive E-Book Aggregators vs. Cutting Out the Middleman

A vendor wants to sell you "comprehensive e-book access" for $12K/year. What they're actually selling you is access to 5,000 titles that no patron has asked for, plus licensing that expires every two years and requires a new contract negotiation. You're paying for the vendor's presence, not for books your patrons actually want.

Here's what actually works:

• Open Library (openlibrary.org) – Free digital lending of a substantial collection. Your patrons can borrow instantly. Cost: $0. It's actually good.
• Project Gutenberg – 70,000+ free public domain books. Your catalog can include these and patrons get them for free. Cost: $0.
• Small press and indie author partnerships – Many authors want library distribution and will work with you directly. You pay per download or per loan, not for access to 10,000 books you'll never circulate. Cost: $0-3K/year depending on your patron demand.
• State consortium e-book purchasing – Your state library group buys together and splits costs. Better pricing, better selection, less vendor nonsense. Cost: $2-4K/year for actual content your patrons might want.

Total: $2-4K/year instead of $12K. And your patrons get books they actually want instead of a catalog inflated with titles nobody knows.

Electronic Resource Management: A Vendor Scam That Works Too Well

A vendor shows you a $12K/year "Electronic Resource Management System." It sounds professional. It has dashboards and workflows and integration points. They tell you "managing digital resources is complex."

You have 6 digital subscriptions. Maybe 8. A spreadsheet manages this. A real spreadsheet. Not a system. Not a platform. A spreadsheet with these columns:

• Resource name (what is this?)
• URL (where do people go?)
• Login (admin username/password – encrypted in your password manager, obviously)
• Renewal date (when do we pay again?)
• Cost (how much?)
• Vendor support contact (who do we call if broken?)
• Notes (what else matters?)

Add a calendar reminder for renewal dates. Every subscription renewal shows up in your calendar 60 days early. You contact the vendor, pay, update the spreadsheet. Done.

Cost: $0. Time to maintain: 30 minutes per quarter.

Is this sophisticated? No. Will an enterprise librarian recognize it as a professional tool? No. Does it work? Absolutely. Your only job is not making this too complicated. Vendors make money by convincing you simple things are complex.

The Actual Reason Tech Projects Fail (And How to Not Be One)

I've watched libraries buy expensive systems and never actually use them. Not because the systems were bad, but because nobody trained the staff. A circulation person would learn 3 features and then give up when they ran into the 4th. The director would use it once and decide the old way was better. Two years later, they're still doing workarounds and the system sits there doing half of what it could.

Here's the truth: You will spend more on training than on the system itself if you want the system to actually work.

Compare these two budgets:

• Option A: Spend $20K on a system, $0 on training because "the staff will figure it out." Result: System never reaches its potential, staff is frustrated, you get no ROI.
• Option B: Spend $8K on a system, $3K on a consultant to do implementation, $2K on paid staff time to learn it properly, and $500 for ongoing support. Result: Staff actually knows how to use the tool, you get real ROI, when they want to add features, they can.

The second library wins. Every time. The money you "save" by skipping training costs you ten times that amount in lost productivity and staff frustration.

This means:

• Pay staff for training time. Don't ask them to learn on top of their regular work. That's how you lose people.
• Hire a consultant for implementation if you're doing open source. $2K-3K for 20 hours of someone who knows this stuff is the best money you'll spend.
• Build a training document specific to your library's actual workflow. Not the vendor's generic manual. Your document. Your process.
• Schedule time for questions. If someone gets stuck, you're available to help. This isn't optional.
• Test everything before staff use it. If you're switching from System A to System B, your staff should spend a week with System B while System A is still running and they can reference it.

A Real Budget That Actually Works: $15K/Year

Here's what a functional small library tech stack actually costs. Not theoretical. Real money, real choices.

Total: $14,800/year.

A vendor's "small library package": $45-60K/year. Same service, half the cost, and you're not locked into a contract that gets 5% more expensive every year.

But here's the thing: these numbers only work if you actually spend the money. If you try to save $2K by skipping the consultant, you lose $6K in implementation headaches. If you skip backups to save $2K, you're betting $250K that nothing bad will happen. Make the investments in the right places.

What Gets Added Later (When You Actually Need It)

Your library will grow. Your needs will change. Some of the stuff you're skipping now will eventually make sense. The key is: don't add it until it actually solves a real problem you're facing right now.

Year 1-2: The Stabilization Phase

You're learning the system. Your staff is getting comfortable. Your job is not adding features, it's making sure backups work and nobody's panicking. Specifically:

• Backups are running and tested monthly
• Your staff can do their job without constantly asking for help
• Security controls are actually in place and people follow them

Don't add anything else. Seriously. Vendors will call offering "enhanced modules." Say no.

Year 2-3: When You Actually Notice Gaps

By now, something will be annoying you. Maybe it's that patrons can't reserve books from their phones. Maybe your website is embarrassing. Maybe you're doing the same manual workaround three times a week. That's your signal. Then you evaluate: is there a tool that solves this? Does it actually work? Is it worth the cost?

• A mobile app or mobile-responsive catalog access (if your ILS doesn't have it) – costs $2-5K or maybe it's built into your system already
• An online appointment system (only if you're getting complaints about booking time) – costs $500-2K
• A website redesign (only if the current one is actively hurting you) – costs $3-8K

Year 3-4: Building Capability, Not Just Responding

Now you have a baseline that works. You might add:

• Integration between systems (but only if two separate systems are actually a problem in practice, not theoretical)
• A digital collection platform (only if you have actual digital materials to organize)
• Better analytics (only once you know which questions you're trying to answer)

The actual rule: If you're not currently frustrated by a lack of something, don't buy it. If you are frustrated, spend two weeks researching solutions instead of four months implementing a system nobody needs.

Your Decision Framework: Should We Buy This?

A vendor is going to pitch you something. Your board member will suggest a tool. A consultant will recommend a system. Before you spend money, ask yourself these questions honestly:

Scoring: Answer yes to 5-6 questions? Buy it. Answer yes to 3-4? Maybe, but sleep on it. Answer yes to 2 or fewer? Don't buy it. The vendor's timing is their problem, not yours.

And if a vendor ever says "you'll be locked into a three-year contract but that's standard for the industry," remember: it's only standard because vendors insist on it. Better vendors offer annual terms. Demand it.

The Actual Bottom Line

You don't need the systems vendors are built to sell you. Here's what you actually need:

• A catalog system that works and lets your staff do their jobs. Koha saves money if you can support it. A proprietary system saves time if you need handholding. Pick one, implement it properly, stop shopping.
• Security that actually protects you. Not security theater. Not compliance theater. Real backups, real testing, real firewalls. Because ransomware doesn't care that you're a small library.
• Ways to talk to your patrons that don't require a $12K platform. Email and a website. That's the whole list. If you're sending announcements to patrons, Mailchimp does this.
• Staff who understand the systems they're using. This matters more than the systems themselves. A mediocre tool that your staff knows how to use beats an excellent tool that confuses them.

Everything else is extras. Integrations, analytics, AI, multi-channel engagement platforms, the works. They can all wait until you're actually drowning in the problem they claim to solve. Most small libraries never need them.

Vendors will tell you that you need comprehensive solutions. They'll say enterprise systems "scale down" to small libraries (they don't). They'll charge you $40K/year and tell you it's market rate (it's not).

You can build a functional, resilient technology infrastructure for $15K/year. You can own it instead of leasing it. You can change your mind in two years instead of being stuck in a three-year contract.

That's the conversation.

Resources & Tools Mentioned

• Koha ILS (Open Source)
• Evergreen ILS (Open Source)
• Open Library (Free Digital Lending)
• Project Gutenberg (Free Public Domain Books)
• Mailchimp (Free Email Marketing)
• Bitwarden (Password Manager)
• CISA Free Security Training Resources
• American Library Association Resources & Conferences
• State Library Resources (example: California)