The newsletter for Evergreen open source library software

Volume 2, Issue 10 - November/December, 2009

As a reminder, we post this newsletter to the Evergreen general discussion list as well as to this blog. Cross-posting and forwarding are encouraged.

Evergreen Out and About, Evergreen Development and Documentation Update, A Booking Module for Mohawk, Evergreen People, Evergreen Jobs, Lyrasis Evergreen Classes, New Evergreen Libraries, Planet Evergreen, A Few Reminders, Newsletter Administrivia

• Please come by and visit the Equinox team and learn more about Evergreen during ALA MidWinter, January 15-18, 2010, booth # 2064

• The 2010 Evergreen International Conference will be held April 21-23, 2010 at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids Michigan. The Conference website contains general information, schedule, exhibitor information, sponsorship information, a link to the Grand Rapids Convention and Visitors Bureau, a link to the Amway for online reservations, and a link to the registration site. Please join us for an exciting 3 days of learning, sharing, networking, and fun in Grand Rapids! http://www.evergreen2010.org/

• Evergreen 1.6.0.0 released!
  • Evergreen 1.6.0.0 was released in mid-November and is already in production at a number of sites. There are many new features, including Google Book Preview, easier OPAC customization with BibTemplate, located URIs, improvements to the Z39.50/SRU server, and a preview of Acquisitions. You can find Evergreen 1.6.0.0 on the downloads page, along with the newly-released OpenSRF 1.2.0 and a staff client build for Windows.

• Evergreen 1.4.0.7 released!
  • A new minor version of the 1.4.x series was also released. This includes a number of bugfixes and is available on the downloads page.

• New BuildBot
  • Shawn Boyette released a preview of a BuildBot to automate testing of Evergreen and OpenSRF. See http://testing.esilibrary.com/ for a preview (Warning: Firefox 3.5+, Chrome, or Safari required to view site at the moment).

• Evergreen Developer Workshop Now Online
  • Dan Scott held an Evergreen Developer Workshop at FSOSS 2009 in Toronto, Canada. Robert Soulliere from Mohawk College has uploaded videos of the workshop to Archive.org, splitting the talk into 9 segments. Dan has also put his workshop materials online. There's an HTML version with written details and, for the extra keen, there's a also a tarball that contains the HTML version plus the code used in the examples and Dan's slides. If you're a new developer that wants to obtain more in-depth knowledge of Evergreen, this is a great place to start.

Ever since Mike Rylander presented at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference way back in 2006? 05? Mohawk has been eyeing Evergreen. We finally went live with Evergreen in July 2009. BTW, the 2010 Super Conference is full of Evergreen goodness: Dan Scott is leading a pre-conference workshop for would be EG developers, and Robert Soulliere and Cynthia Williamson will be presenting on the Mohawk experience.

Prior to going live, Mohawk belonged to an ILS consortium using SIRSI’s Unicorn and felt constrained, to say the least. This article is not about that experience but suffice it to say that after a long haul of sorting out using a Linux server when no one else in the college does and figuring out if we could do without the acquisitions and serials modules, we aimed to go live in late spring or early summer of 2009.

Our big stumbling block was the inability to book video materials in Evergreen. The Library @ Mohawk purchases and circulates all of the audiovisual materials used by faculty to teach. In Unicorn, it was possible for staff to book a video or DVD for a specific day and time so that instructors could use them in class. The booking restricted circulation on the booked video or DVD so that it would be available at the right time, even if it had to be sent to another campus. EG did not have this feature. We thought about using a separate calendar system and some modified circ rules but in the end it seemed best to get things working in EG. We figured out early on that Robert, our Systems Librarian would not be able to develop the booking module himself. The next step was squeezing into the Equinox development schedule – they are a busy bunch!

The joy of FOSS is that we were able to go live early in the final year of our support contract with SIRSI and thus run both systems, something usually impossible during a migration because it is almost financially impossible to pay for a new system while continuing to pay for an old system. So we used EG for most things but continued to book videos and DVDs in Unicorn.We managed to get in to the Equinox development line-up with the promise that the module will be ready for the end of 2009, a good 3 months before we turn off Unicorn.

Originally, we envisioned the feature to work like an enhanced hold because our current needs are strictly for bibliographic material bookings. However, in our initial discussions with Equinox, it was clear that we could create a more useful module if it is possible to book non-bibliographic items like rooms, equipment, etc. Done! It is our hope that this module appeals to lots of folks and will make EG even more “saleable”. Between it and serials and acquisitions, EG is becoming quite the grown-up ILS.

We’re only part way through the development so we won’t share details here now. We’re just about ready to test it, the module will be shared with everyone and made available in 1.6. If you want to learn more about what Mohawk is doing with EG please come to Toronto for the OLA Super Conference and if you can’t, we’ll be sharing our presentation. Access our EG implementation here: http://libcat.mohawkcollege.ca

Cynthia Williamson,
Collection Management Librarian,
Mohawk College, Hamilton ON

Amy Terlaga, of Bibliomation, Inc., in Middlebury, CT, will have her article, "Fear and Trembling in Connecticut (or 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Open Source')", published in the January/February 2010 issue of Computers in Libraries. She details her consortium's decision to migrate their libraries to Evergreen, after an initial period of personal open source angst. Amy can be reached at terlaga@biblio.org.

Lyrasis is offering several Evergreen classes in the near future:

Evergreen Circulation Module (Live Online)
2/4/2010, 10:00am-12:00pm EST

Evergreen Cataloging Module (Live Online)
3/3/2010-3/4/2010 2:00pm-4:00pm EST

Evergreen Administration and Reports Module (Live Online)
3/10/2010, 10:00am-12:00pm EST

To register, please see the Lyrasis website.

LYRASIS (created from a merger of SOLINET, PALINET and NELINET) has taught dozens of Evergreen classes. Lyrasis is dedicated to training and instructing Evergreen, and they welcome your comments and suggestions for courses. All of their current course offerings are continuously updated, and Lyrasis plans to add more courses in the future. For comments or questions, contact Lyrasis instructors Jennifer.Bielewski@lyrasis.org or Jenny.Liberatore@lyrasis.org

• Evergreen Indiana
  • Since the previous newsletter, six more library systems in Indiana migrated to Evergreen: Culver-Union Public Township Library, LaGrange Public Library, Monticello-Union Township Public Library, Paoli Public Library, Princeton-Patoka Township Library, Syracuse Turkey Creek Township Public Library, Vermillion County Public Library, Waveland Brown Township Public Library, West Lafayette Public Library, Westfield Washington Public Library, and Wolcott Community Public Library. These migrations bring the number of Indiana libraries online with Evergreen up to 53! For more information, see the press release.
• BC SITKA
  • The Thompson-Nicola Regional District Library System became Sitka's 25th site. With 13 branches and 1 bookmobile, TNRD is the largest system on Sitka's instance of Evergreen so far.

Can’t get enough news about Evergreen open source software? Subscribe to or read Planet Evergreen, an aggregator for Evergreen-related posts. Have a blog that talks about Evergreen? To add your blog to the Planet Evergreen blog aggregator, send email to Dan Scott at dan@coffeecode.net

Evergreen has a Flickr set and a Facebook group.

Feel free to forward, share, etc.! The co-wranglers for this newsletter (produced every month–sometimes earlier, sometimes later–what can we say!) are …

Amy Terlaga, Bibliomation, Inc., terlaga@biblio.org Jason Etheridge, Equinox Software Inc., jason@esilibrary.com

You can also reach us both at newsletter@evergreen-ils.org