Evergreen DokuWiki

Title: Authority Control in Evergreen: The straight dope

Description: Authorities are dope, yo. Used properly, they simplify cataloging and increase patron access to materials through improved discovery capabilities. During this session we will discuss exactly how authority control works in Evergreen, some common but inaccurate assumptions about authority control in Evergreen, and how best to make use of the advanced capabilities that Evergreen provides. We will cover browse integration, automatic record overlay, authority generation, bibliographic and inter-authority record linking, Control Sets and their configuration, and how to make use of local, extra-LoC data and expertise to leverage the full potential of Evergreen's authority control feature set.

Audience: Catalogers, systems librarians, reference librarians

Presenters:
Mike Rylander, Director of Research and Development at Equinox Software
Angela Kilsdonk, Education Manager at Equinox Software

Session Length: Standard 45-minute Session

Description: Take a tour of some of the ways that you can bring together groups of bibliographic records or copies in the Evergreen staff client to manage update records, make lists and manage displays, summer reading and other special projects.

Audience: Tech Services and public services library staff

Presenter:
Elizabeth B. Thomsen, MB (Master of Bucketology)
Member Services Manager, NOBLE: North of Boston Library Exchange

Sessions Length: Standard 45-minute Session

Description: Demonstration of patron bills. How to bill a patron, how bills can be paid, how refunds are issued, how payment type does not affect the refund process, and how to void bills.

Presenter: Dawn Dale, PINES Helpdesk Manager, Georgia Public Library Service

Sessions Length: Standard 45-minute Session

Description: Are you curious about what the staff side of Evergreen looks like? As an experienced Evergreen end-user, I will give a live demo of staff client functions like Circulation, Patron management, Cataloging, and Acquisitions, as well as basic local administration functions if time permits. The demo will be scoped to either version 2.4 or 2.5, and will be done using a basic non-custom version of Evergreen so that attendees can see what the software looks like “out of the box”.

Presumed tech level of audience: Lower tech level (end user/beginner)

Presenter: Andrea Buntz Neiman, Librarian II Public Services, Kent County Public Library

Session length: 45 minutes (I am open to doing this as a longer and much more in-depth tutorial if there is interest).

Description: Tutorial of adding patrons to the staff client, editing patrons, checking out items, checking in items, searching the patron database, searching the catalog and placing holds, and other daily functions for library staff.

Presenter: Dawn Dale, PINES Helpdesk Manager, Georgia Public Library Service

Sessions Length: Tutorial

Description: This talk goes over tricks you can use with your custom receipt templates, including how to use barcode fonts, rotate text, insert images, and how to make your receipts more dynamic with conditional logic. These tricks will expose you to HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but will be shared in easy to re-use "recipes" that you can copy into Evergreen.

Presenter: Jason Etheridge, Support Manager, Equinox Software

Session Length: Standard 45-minute session

Description: Starting in the patron’s account and navigating throughout the database, we’ll take a look at different aspects of the patron billing interface. This session will cover how to remove negative balances (that seem to be “stuck”) from patron accounts, the difference between voiding and forgiving fines, briefly discuss different billings-related Reports Sources, and other billing interface topics along the way. This session will be based on the most current version of Evergreen available at conference time.

Presenter: Erica Rohlfs, Education Specialist, Equinox Software, Inc

Sessions Length: Standard 45-minute Session

Description: We intend to provide a start-to-finish, practical walkthrough of a Serials workflow, focusing on the entry of subscription metadata and ancillary information (via the Alternate Serial Control View), an exploration of the Pattern Code Wizard, and the two interfaces for receiving serial items. We will also address how “controlled” serials in Evergreen can be combined with legacy holdings to inform richer displays in library OPACs.

The tutorial will define a recommended workflow for the latest version of Evergreen available at conference time. We will reserve some time at the end of our session for discussion of any new features on the horizon for Evergreen Serials, as well as Q & A.

Presenters:
Erica Rohlfs, Education Specialist, Equinox Software, Inc.
Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley, Senior Software Developer, Equinox Software, Inc.

Session Length: Tutorial

Description: End User and/or Technical Track.

Any good reference librarian wants to know exactly where their data comes from and with your ILS's data being crucial, why trust it to a reporter that shapes it for you? Learn the power of not only the basics of the structured query language to read and manipulate Evergreen's database but learn how you can teach yourself.

Presenter: Presented by Rogan Hamby (SCLENDS) who in fact taught himself SQL and is now only mildly incompetent!

Session Length: I can do this in the 45 minute or tutorial track. I would prefer the longer time but a shorter time would be enough to give a "taste of sql."

Description: Evergreen is part of a larger ecosystem of F/LOSS projects that serve libraries, archives, and the broader public service and information management community. Equinox Implementation Manager Galen Charlton, who is active in both the Evergreen and Koha projects, will discussion what we can learn from other projects and how we can share technology, designs, ideas about finding resources, as well as the fruits of our experience, both bitter and sweet.

Presenter: Galen Charlton, Equinox Software, Inc.

Session Length: Standard 45-minute session

Description: Coordination and collaboration are key ingredients when building a successful consortium. I will explain how NC Cardinal, North Carolina’s Evergreen Consortium, developed workflows which enabled 20% of North Carolina’s public libraries to migrate to Evergreen in a very short timeframe. In anticipation of rapid future growth, we are conducting the following activities: increasing the efficiency of the existing organizational structure, re-focusing current training programs, fine-tuning migration processes, and implementing improved resource sharing policies. I will discuss each of these above activities in terms of what works today, what did not work, and how we plan to work in the future.

Presenter: Tanya Prokrym, State Library of North Carolina

Session Length: Standard 45-minute session

Description: A diverse panel of Evergreen community members will give a brief introduction to the Evergreen project & community. An audience-driven Q&A will follow the introduction. Panelists represent single-plantings and consortia; librarians, directors, developers, admins, and vendors; and all have several years’ experience within the Evergreen project. This is intended for new community members or those who are exploring the project for the first time – come and see what we’re all about & see how you can get involved!

Presumed tech level of audience: Broad spectrum – all are welcome

Panelists:
Andrea Buntz Neiman; Librarian II, Public Services; Kent County Public Library
Chauncey Montgomery; Director/Fiscal Officer; Community Library
Ruth Frasur; Director; Hagerstown-Jefferson Township Library
Tanya Prokrym; NC Cardinal Prorgram Manager; State Library of North Carolina
John Clark; Librarian; Maine Balsam Libraries Consortium
Mike Rylander; Director of Research & Developmnt; Equinox Software Inc.
Grace Dunbar; Vice President; Equinox Software Inc.
Jim Keenan; Library Applications Supervisor; C/W MARS
Elizabeth McKinney; PINES Program Director; Georgia Public Library Service

Session length: Standard 45-minute session

Description: How do you write something that makes sense to both developers and librarians? You can fail a lot (like we did) or you can learn from our mistakes and successes. Join us as we discuss successful (and not so successful) development requirements. We’ll discuss what you should specify, what you shouldn’t, how to make your desires understood, the importance of flexibility, and how to involve staff. Real examples of ideal, and less than ideal, requirements and bug reports will be dissected. There will be an introduction to LaunchPad and its etiquette. We will also spend a few minutes discussing best practices for development contracts. It’s going to be a fast-paced session with a lot of information, but there will be time for discussion (and handouts !).

Presenters:
Chris Sharp, PINES System Administrator, GPLS
Grace Dunbar, V.P., Equinox Software

Session Length: Standard 45-minute session

Description: In 2010, under the direction of OhioNet, Equinox began building FulfILLment, a new model for resource sharing software. Using the core of Evergreen’s scalable and robust infrastructure, FulfILLment offers libraries a new way to think about Inter Library Loan. Gone are the days of emailing (or faxing) requests to other libraries and waiting weeks or months for a response. FulfILLment takes the staff overhead out of ILL by allowing patrons to directly place requests and then making those requests in other ILSes without staff intervention. FulfILLment has been live-tested on Polaris, Horizon, Evergreen and Koha. Aleph, and Symphony connectors have only been tested in a development environment. FulfILLment allows for the creation of granular sharing and circulation policies – some of which were ported to Evergreen to allow for direct manipulation of the “proximity” of org units to allow libraries to adjust for physical distance when that distance may not be reflected in the org tree. In this session, we will cover FulfILLment’s structure, its workflows, and have a live demonstration.

Presenters:
Grace Dunbar, V.P., Equinox Software
Bill Erickson, Senior Developer, Equinox Software

Session Length: Standard 45-minute session

Description: Dealing with duplicate records is an ongoing challenge for library catalogs large and small, but particularly for consortial Evergreen catalogs. Equinox Implementation Manager Galen Charlton will discuss the state of the art of identifying and merging duplicate records using tools inside and outside of Evergreen. Galen will cover not only the mechanics, but the process for planning deduplication and record cleanup projects.

Presenter: Galen Charlton, Equinox Software, Inc.

Session Length: Standard 45-minute session

Description: Since the 1860’s, books have been acquired for and gifted to the Georgia Executive Mansion. As a result, the Mansion now holds in trust for the citizens of the state approximately 3,000 titles by Georgians or about the state. After a 2011 meeting with Georgia’s First Lady and her staff, State Librarian Lamar Veatch and Deputy state librarian Julie Walker discovered the difficulties Mansion staff had finding any specific title on the shelves since, while there was a card catalog, there were no call numbers and the shelving system was not fully documented or followed. Lamar and Julie tasked the PINES staff with developing a plan to create an online catalog for the Mansion. Operating with a small grant from the Georgia Humanities Council and volunteer catalogers, we created a standalone instance of Evergreen branded to the Mansion and an online catalog for the Mansion staff that will allow also Georgians to discover what titles are held in trust for them at the Mansion.

Technical expertise: Moderate to advanced

Presenters:
J. Elaine Hardy, PINES and Collaborative Projects Manager, Georgia Public Library Service/PINES
Chris Sharp, PINES System Administrator, Georgia Public Library Service/PINES

Session Length: Standard 45-minute session

Description Learn how Bibliomation, one of the original development partners of the KPAC (Children's Catalog), worked with children's and school librarians to build and implement an easy-to-use, child-friendly, visual discovery interface for the OPAC. Learn how PINES customized the default KPAC with their own graphics and expanded the functionality to meet the needs of their 275+ public library branches. Bibliomation will provide a brief overview of KPAC implementation and configuration, and PINES will provide tips on customizing it for your own library.

Presenters:
Terran McCanna, PINES Program Manager - Georgia Public Library Service
Ben Shum, Evergreen Systems Manager - Bibliomation, Inc.
Amy Terlaga, Assistant Director, User Services - Bibliomation, Inc.

Sessions Length: Standard 45-minute session

Description: In 2013, due to limitations with the existing staff client, the Evergreen community decided it was time to replace XULRunner with a browser-based client. This change will put Evergreen in a much better position going forward and it will solve a lot of long-standing staff client issues, but it also creates a new set of challenges. In this session, I will discuss the benefits, the challenges, and how we got here to begin with. I will also take an in-depth look at the state of the Evergreen staff client, including the technologies in play, and how we as a community anticipate the project will evolve going forward.

Presenter: Bill Erickson, Senior Software Developer, Equinox

Session Length: Standard 45-minute session

Description: Git, the version control system used for Evergreen, is not just for the developers. It's for anybody who wants to deploy and upgrade Evergreen without losing local tweaks and for anybody who wants to get into the nitty-gritty of following along with changes to Evergreen's code and documentation.

During this tutorial session, Galen Charlton, Implementation Manager at Equinox, will guide participants through basic Git workflows, including

• cloning repositories
• making changes to code and/or documentation
• managing branches
• contributing changes and participating in the signoff process
• installing Evergreen from a Git repository.

Presenter: Galen Charlton, Equinox Software, Inc.

Session Length: Tutorial

Description: It happens to every library, sometimes during a migration, sometimes during routine events but something goes horribly, horribly wrong. Sometimes the alert comes from an automated text message and sometimes it’s from a phone call with a harried voice on the other end. We almost always hear the music from horror movies starting in our heads. And every long-time admin has at least a few of these stories. Come to hear strange tales of disaster and stranger tales of recoveries both from the presenters and gathered from the wider community - anonymity guaranteed to protect the guilty. Expect one part technology and one part dark slapstick.

Presenters: Galen Charlton (Equinox Software) & Rogan Hamby (SCLENDS)

Session Length: Standard 45-minute session

Additional note: Part of our plan is to not only share our own stories but actively and anonymously solicit stories from other members of the community. Part of the intention of this is to build on a valuable dynamic we observed during our past two There and Back Again presentations where people really benefited from sharing stories in a large setting.

Description: Quality Assurance is a process for monitoring and informing software development so that the software meets the needs and requirements of its end users. The Evergreen community has always had such processes, but there is room for improvement. This talk goes over different QA processes, and focuses particularly on continuous integration testing and how to develop more such tests for Evergreen, which is essential for us to gain any real advantage with that strategy.

Presenter: Jason Etheridge, Support Manager, Equinox Software

Session Length: Standard 45-minute session