The newsletter for Evergreen open source library software

Volume 3, Issue 1 - January/February 2010

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

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

• February 24, 2010 - Customizing and Extending Evergreen: a guide for geeks is a half-day workshop that Dan Scott will lead at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference.

A new bugfix release of Evergreen, version 1.6.0.2, was released on February 18th. It includes many fixes and updated translations, including new translations for English (UK), Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese. For a complete list of the new fixes and features, see http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=feature_list_1_6_0

On February 8th, a new version of OpenSRF was released, version 1.2.2, which includes important fixes for high traffic environments. If you are running Evergreen 1.6+ you are strongly encouraged to upgrade!

This is a look at some of the current differences between trunk and the 1.6 branch. Most of these features need testing, feedback, and/or polish, but may one day get backported to 1.6 or show up in the next major branch release.

Toward allowing arbitrary notes for buckets and bookbags.

Allows you to define display positions for copy/shelving locations. No longer has to be in alphabetical order.

Optionally allows us to give a "good quality" or "mint condition" or "pristine" or "complete with all pieces" type designation to items, and allows holds to optionally be filled only by items in that condition.

This sets the leader/05 appropriately.

If an item is already checked out to a user and the circulation is past a configured auto-renewal interval, attempt to treat the transaction as a renewal instead. Option for doing this with offline transactions as well.

Action for backdating checkins that have already happened (e.g. checkin the item, notice that you should have backdated, and then do so after the fact)

"Scan time" field shows the true time that an item was checked in, regardless of backdating. We also record the specific workstation for all checkins.

An augmented view of billable transaction summaries. Toward filtering by location in the billing interface.

Org-unit setting for capping fines at the item price. Existing Percent of Item Price functionality for fine caps trumps this setting.

Reportable abstraction of this data.

In Evergreen, renewals show up as circulations, though you're able to select or filter for these based on renewal flags on the circs. Circulation chains allow us to group together a logical sequence of original checkout and subsequent renewals as one entity.

Allows you to set a number for how many claims returned items are allowed on a patron's account before requiring override for new checkouts.

Can now include patron money summary information (amount owed, etc.) in checkout receipts.

Allows you to designate a copy status for post-claims returned items.

An Evergreen installation normally has a periodic process for generating fines. To supplement that, we now generate fines for a given circulation at the time of checkin, to handle certain boundary conditions.

Basic support for floating collections where items can stay where they land.

For supporting clearable patron and/or staff facing record of checkouts.

Interface toggle and related org unit settings for showing and manipulating canceled holds.

Free-text staff notes that can optionally be printed on hold slips.

Checks to see if an item status change warrants a retargeting of related hold requests.

Dedicated interface for listing patrons with negative balances.

Org-unit setting for treating patron barcodes in offline transactions as usernames based on barcode format.

Can mark a circulation as Claims Never Checked Out, which changes the status to Missing.

Org-unit setting for changing the copy status to something arbitrary for Claims Returned items.

Config setting which allows retrieval of patrons by their internal DB ID.

Staging area for patron data from self-registration, migrations, external systems, etc.

Circ modifier and ISBN field for pre-cataloged items. The circ modifier will carry over when/if the item is cataloged. And of course, you can create circulation rules based on an item being a pre-cat with consideration of its circ modifier.

Org-unit setting for setting the circ lib of a pre-cat. For example, you could checkout a pre-cat item at BR1, but have it's circ lib be BR2, so that upon checkin, it'll transit to BR2.

Brings a hold to the front of the line, or at least next to other Top of Queue holds.

EDI? Funds? History?

View (and in some cases Edit or Cancel) triggered events for patrons and copies. These can include notices, etc.

Better support for defining/categorizing different user and org unit settings.

Pre-requisite installer target for Ubuntu's Karmic Koala distribution.

Dan Scott, Systems Librarian at Laurentian University, will be flying down to Connecticut in February to teach Bibliomation staff how to write postgreSQL queries for the Evergreen system. Dan is tailoring his lesson plan to Bibliomation's specific reporting needs. Dan will be contributing his course materials to the Evergreen community. Class dates - February 18th and 19th.

Bibliomation, King County Library System, the SITKA Libraries (British Columbia), and the PINES Library System (GPLS) have partnered with the Seattle-based web design firm, FGI, to develop some functional specifications and a project plan for an Evergreen children's catalog. This catalog will have graphical images to guide children to the appropriate reading material. FGI is the same company that KCLS is currently using to design the new interface for the Evergreen adult web catalog. For more information, you can email Amy Terlaga at Bibliomation (terlaga@biblio.org).

The Ontario Library Association (OLA) awarded two of its 2010 OLA and OLA Divisional awards to Project Conifer:

1. The Ontario College and University Library Association (OCULA) Special Achievement Award
2. The Ontario Library Information Technology Association (OLITA) Award for Technical Innovation

These rewards recognize not only on the partner libraries that are part of Project Conifer, but the entire Evergreen community without which Project Conifer could never have happened.

• Natural Resources Canada Library completed its second and final phase of their migration on January 15, 2010. Their 13 locations across Canada are now all running Evergreen.

• SC LENDS in South Carolina welcomed three new libraries to their Evergreen consortium in January 2010: Anderson County Library, Fairfield County Library, and Florence County Library.

• The Indiana Open Source ILS Initiative has already welcomed five new libraries to their Evergreen consortium since the start of 2010: Greensburg-Decatur County Contractual Public Library, Kirklin Public Library, Ligonier Public Library, Linden-Carnegie Public Library, and Roanoke Public Library.

• Kirtland Community College in Roscommon, MI went live with Evergreen in January 2010.

• SITKA in British Columbia welcomed the Mackenzie Public Library into its consortium on February 25, 2010.

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 …