Archive for the ‘Announcements’ Category

Release 1.6.0.2

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

The Evergreen development team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Evergreen 1.6.0.2 from http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads (including the Windows staff client).

Evergreen 1.6.0.2 is both a bug-fix and minor feature enhancement release: see http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=feature_list_1_6_0 for an overview of the changes since 1.6.0.1. This release continues the momentum of increased community contributions of bug reports, fixes, and translations.

We invite you to try this releases, our best yet! And if you happen to find any bugs, please report them to https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen or to the Evergreen Development Discussion list.

HOTFIX ALERT

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Well, ain’t that always the way.  In an attempt to fix one thing, we’ve broken another.

In 1.6.0.1 we fixed a bug whereby searches containing a colon, but not one that denotes a search class or modifier (like “keyword:” or “site:”), we being completely ignored.  However, that cause complications for some other searches.  The main place we’ve seen this show up is in the Z39.50 server, where requesting holdings output always causes the construction of an offending search.

This was identified by Dan Scott last night, after reports from users in the field, and I committed a fix to all open branches as of 11:00 AM EST today.  We’ll be cutting a new release, 1.6.0.2, as soon as a translation-related fix is applied but in the mean time you can see the change and download the updated file you need right here.  If you’ve installed Evergreen into the default location, drop this file into /openils/lib/perl5/OpenILS/Application/Search/ and restart the whole shebang.  Your searches will then all be happy.

If you have any questions or experience any issues, please join us in IRC or let us know on the mailing lists.

Evergreen Documentation Licensing Terms

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

The Evergreen Documentation Interest Group (DIG) has voted to accept the following proposals for Evergreen Documentation Licensing. The vote took place December 21, 2009 – January 4, 2010 on the Documentation Interest Group Mailing List. There were 18 yes votes and 0 no votes, for a unanimous decision.

Since these licensing terms affect the entire Evergreen community, and particularly anyone who has contributed to the Documentation Wiki, we wanted to keep everyone informed. Please take a moment to read the licensing terms below (also available on the wiki at http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=evergreen-docs:documentation_licensing_terms). If you have previously contributed documentation to the Documentation Wiki and do NOT want your contributions to be licensed under these terms, please contact the DIG facilitators or the DIG mailing list and let us know that by Friday, January 29th.

I am crossposting this to several Evergreen related mailing lists and blogs, as well as sending an email about this to anyone with a DokuWiki account, so I apologize for duplicate messages. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the DIG facilitators at docs@evergreen-ils.org.

I hope you’ll agree that this is a positive step forward for the Evergreen community. And, if you find some free time, that you might consider joining the Documentation Interest Group in producing some community-wide documentation.

Thanks,
Karen Collier
Documentation Interest Group Co-Facilitator

1 – Official Evergreen Documentation produced by the Documentation Interest Group should be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

2 – Any code included in the official documentation produced by the Documentation Interest Group should also be made available under the GNU GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).

3 – Official Evergreen Documentation may be made available under another copy-left (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/copyleft.html) open source (http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd) license in the future with a majority vote on the Evergreen Documentation List (open-ils-documentation@list.georgialibraries.org) or comparable indication of the Evergreen community’s wishes.

4 – These same licensing terms should be applied to the Documentation Wiki. Past contributors to the Documentation Wiki should be notified by emails sent to Evergreen community mailing lists and to the email address associated with their docuwiki account of the new licensing terms and given a reasonable amount of time to request that their contributions not be included under those licensing terms.

5 – By submitting documentation to the Documentation wiki or to the Evergreen Documentation List after licensing terms have been decided and publicized, contributors indicate that they (a) agree to these licensing terms, and (b) to the best of their knowledge have the right to do so through copyright ownership, permission from the copyright owner(s), and/or the licensing terms of any documents that were modified or incorporated into their submission.

Evergreen Release Candidate 1.4 Available

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

On Friday, October 17, 2008, the Evergreen community released Evergreen 1.4, Release Candidate 1. It is linked on the project website downloads page.

As noted elsewhere, in software, a release candidate (or RC) is similar to a political candidate: it should have a strong platform, it should be more “walk” than “talk,” and it’s out there for evaluation.

RC 1.4 is suitable for testing new installations of Evergreen and trying out the great new features available in version 1.4. Partial upgrade instructions from the 1.2 series are available and will evolve throughout the Release Candidate process.

This will not be the last Release Candidate for 1.4, but barring major issues other than installation and upgrade cleanup, it is very close. We invite and encourage you to download and install this version for testing purposes but recommend that you wait until the final 1.4.0.0 release for production use. This version of Evergreen requires version 1.0 or greater of OpenSRF, also on the downloads page.

You can read more about 1.4 on the Evergreen Development Roadmap.

Also see this post from Equinox Software describing just two of 1.4’s features — courtesy notices and non-SIP self-check.

Here are a few of the outward-facing 1.4 features and the status of their development in RC 1.4:

  • Improved administrative interfaces for defining organizations and permissions — in place
  • New interface for circulation rules –the back-end is in place, the UI is imminent
  • Credit card payments — back-end completed, awaiting community discussion on interface
  • Multi-source Z39.50 search for staff — in place. The UI hasn’t been finished for configuring the Z targets, but these can still be set in the script.
  • Pre-overdue (reminder) notices — in place
  • SRU/Z39.50 server — in place
  • Publication date filtering in advanced OPAC search — in place
  • Preferred-language setting at both system and organizational level for search results is in place in the back-end, though we need a little more work to make this available in the UI.
  • Web-based batch record importer/exporter (Vandelay) — done, except for the UI for holdings import
  • Unrecovered debt — mostly done, with a little permissions work needed to wrap it up

Congratulations to the developers — and please do test this out and report back!

Freelance work for acquisitions documentation writers

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Some stakeholders in the Evergreen community have an immediate need for writers who can produce well-written documentation for acquisitions services in library automation software. Librarians and other library workers who use, configure, or manage library acquisitions systems are the audience for this documentation. This is freelance work to begin in September, 2008 and be completed no later than December, 2008. Rates are competitive. Contact Karen Schneider, Equinox Community Librarian with at least two relevant writing samples and a brief description of your experience with writing documentation.

Congrats to not one, but two other Open Source ILSs

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

First I’d like to welcome NewGenLib to the virtual family of FOSS ILSs. In truth, we’ve known about them for a while and have been looking at their serials interfaces during our ACQ/SER design, but now that eIFL is covering them, well… ;) It’s great to see another entrant, and one that has already found an itch to scratch. I’m sure cross-pollination is in the stars as they seem to have an interesting system.

Next up, a pair of kudos to Koha.

Over the past weekend they added, at a mailing list member’s request, a call number browser inspired by Evergreen’s, which we call Shelf Browse. In Evergreen, because it supports a hierarchical organization of libraries, you can actually browse an entire system or even consortium as one huge virtual shelf! It’s a very nifty feature, and one that we know the PINES patrons have been making good use of (to the tune of 66,965 and counting so far this year, and about 300,000 times in 2007) since Evergreen launched in September of 2006. Now Koha will have a similar feature at the request of a small church Library! This, my friends, is Open Source at work.

By way of evidence from our users, I’ll mention that Evergreen provides call number / shelf browse as a “Quick Search” from the advanced search interface, which is useful to Evergreen users and may be useful for Koha patrons as well. In any case, good work.

I also noticed that Koha has incorporated, as of November of last year according to their source repository’s timestamps, the SIP2 code that David Fiander and Bill Erickson wrote for Evergreen. We’re glad to see the code that GPLS funded is going to good use in and inspiring other projects!

Three and a half years ago, when I first joined PINES and the Evergreen team, there was a dream and a small test server. Now we’ve written more than a quarter of a million lines of code, and that code runs the day-to-day operations of one state-wide library consortium (biggest in the world, he bragged ;) ) with at least two more in the works, and is helping to build a province-wide consortium in Canada — and let’s not forget the Laurentian/McMaster/Windsor “Unholy Trinity.” These are amazing, and they fill my heart with a satisfaction that is difficult to describe, but none of those things, even as possibilities, are why I signed up. I joined this effort because I believe in Open Source software. I believe whole-heartedly that it is a force for positive change in an industry I love, and fits perfectly with the mission of libraries.

Again, congrats to both NewGenLib and Koha, and let’s keep the cross-pollination going.

–miker

BC Pines Growth

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Posting an announcement from Jacqueline van Dyk from the British Columbia Pines Project:

Greetings,

I am pleased to announce the launch of the 3rd Evergreen pilot site in BC, Powell River Public Library. Their online catalogue can now be viewed at: http://powellriver.catalogue.bclibrary.ca/

Joining Prince Rupert and Fort Nelson on the system, the collective holdings for all three libraries can be searched here: http://catalogue.bclibrary.ca

Watch for the launch of the Terrace public library next and stay tuned for the remainder of the 2008 implementation schedule.

Welcome aboard Powell River!

Indeed, welcome aboard!

PLA and an Evergreen Users Group, Birds of a Feather gathering?

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Hi folks,

I was wondering if any of you would be interested in gathering together to talk about Evergreen during the Public Library Association’s National Conference (http://www.placonference.org/) in March? Most of the Evergreen developers will be there and we can arrange for a meeting space. The notion is that anyone interested in the project (software, community, vendors, etc.) could be invited, and we could style it as a Birds of a Feather-type gathering, or maybe even the nucleus of an independent Evergreen Users Group.

What do you think? What sort of topics or activities would you be interested in? Would you be interested in something like this at other times or places? Is anyone interested in helping to organize this?

Thanks!

– Jason

LOCATION UPDATE:March 27, 5:30pm – 7:30pm at the Minneapolis Marriot City Center, Gray & Wayzata rooms (8th floor)

PINES Consortium welcomes Lake Blackshear Regional Library

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

Just a quick post to announce PINES has grown by another library system: Lake Blackshear Regional. The PINES consortium has now grown to 49 library systems comprised of over 275 physical locations. The database has also grown: PINES is up to 9.3 million items and 1.8 million active users. PINES had over 17 million circulations last year.

Indiana Open Source ILS Initiative

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

The Indiana State Library and the Hussey Mayfield Memorial Public Library (Zionsville) have announced the Indiana Open Source ILS Initiative. They are embarking on a statewide project to implement Evergreen in a fashion similar to the Georgia PINES consortium.

More information can be found in the announcement. Congratulations, and welcome to the community!

Laurentian University and Evergreen in an academic context

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

I’ve been contributing to Evergreen in various ways for a long time now, and strongly hinted back in October that this was becoming more than just a personal involvement with Evergreen.

Laurentian University, my employer, recently issued a press release announcing that we have selected Evergreen as our future library system. I think this is big news, because Evergreen has thus far been seen primarily as a public library system. We recognize that there are some major tasks to accomplish before we can migrate to Evergreen — acquisitions, serials, academic reserves, documentation — but we’ve observed and participated in the Evergreen development effort, were encouraged by the results, and therefore have chosen to contribute resources to the development effort to help evolve Evergreen towards what we need from an academic library system.

We believe that Evergreen represents the best possible path towards a library system that will meet our users’ current and future needs. Evergreen does not repeat the mistakes of integrated library systems of the past: its service oriented architecture and Perl, C, Java, and Python bindings make it an integrated, yet loosely coupled, library system that can also integrate with our existing campus applications.

The University of Windsor took the important first step of establishing a community for academic institutions by partnering with GPLS to work on the acquisitions module. By selecting Evergreen as our future library system and contributing to the development effort, Laurentian University is taking the next step in solidifying that community — and based on the interest that has already been expressed by other academic institutions (both directly to us, and publicly on the Evergreen mailing lists), we look forward to other institutions joining us in building a strong, collaborative, and innovative community.

The Michigan Evergreen Project

Monday, January 7th, 2008

MLC is excited to be a part of the Evergreen community!

The Michigan Library Consortium (MLC) is a non-profit membership organization comprised of nearly 600 Michigan libraries of all types. MLC provides libraries a single point of contact for training, group purchasing and technical support for OCLC Products, electronic resources and more.

MLC and the Grand Rapids Public Library (GRPL) are currently working together to develop and launch the Michigan Evergreen Project, a shared library system using the open source ILS, Evergreen. MLC and GRPL will implement and maintain the shared ILS using a cost-sharing model. Libraries participating in the Michigan Evergreen project will pool resources to share in the costs of operating and maintaining the system, which will be wholly owned by the libraries in the collaborative.

Initially, MLC set out to find an affordable ILS system compatible with the Michigan eLibrary’s catalog, MelCat. Many Michigan libraries were using ILS systems that were homegrown or no longer supported by their Vendor. After researching several commercial and open source ILS systems, and discovering a great deal of interest in Evergreen among Michigan libraries, we decided to launch the Michigan Evergreen Project.

The project will begin in 2008 with a pilot group of five or more libraries. The initial pilot group will migrate to the shared system in two phases, with the first phase going live by July 2008 and the second phase going live later in 2008. In 2009 and future years, MLC plans to add libraries to the shared system annually.

We’re open to all input and questions, so please feel free to contact us!

Evette Atkin

Systems Librarian, Michigan Evergreen Project

atkine@mlcnet.org

Libraries growing together

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

BC Pines now has two libraries, Prince Rupert Library and Fort Nelson Public Library, running on a production instance of Evergreen, with another on the way early next year. Potentially, it could grow in scope into a consortium comparable in size to Georgia’s PINES program.

It is often said that Evergreen is designed for large consortia, and that’s true enough, but another way of stating it is to say that Evergreen is designed to connect libraries, and you really don’t need to emphasize “large” there.

The Public Library Services Branch of British Columbia has a vision, one of “libraries without walls”, which will facilitate equitable access to information, encourage collaboration and partnerships to improve delivery of services, and initiate governance reform. Initiatives such as BC OneCard (one library card for the whole province) and AskAway (a province-wide virtual reference service), have proven tremendously popular, and if PINES is any example, a shared ILS connecting libraries should likewise benefit patrons and librarians.

With a shared ILS, patrons gain increased access to library resources. Libraries benefit from economies of scale, and if the shared ILS is an open-source system like Evergreen, they get to decide on development priorities, and have insurance against an uncertain vendor market.

Evergreen can help you grow large consortia, but to use half a metaphor, that doesn’t diminish our focus on the trees. Like BC Pines says, it’s about “Libraries growing together”.

– Jason