Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday
Wednesday, March 19
9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Developer Hackfest sponsored by BC Libraries Cooperative
Documentation Hackfest
9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Git Tutorial
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, Implementation Manager, Equinox Software, Inc.
12 to 1 p.m.
Lunch on your own in Kendall Square
1 to 4 p.m.
Hello Reports! Stumbling Towards the Data You Need
Download Presentation (PDF)
Download Presentation (PDF) (Emergency Slides)
Reports in Evergreen are quite powerful. Yet, developing a report is often like wandering through a maze of sources, fields, data types, etc., until you get the results you need. This session will be an introduction to the report module, covering the basics of report generation. We’ll cover topics such as managing folders, choosing sources, filtering results, and sharing reports with other users. The session will be based on version 2.4
Presenters: Chauncey Montgomery, Director/Fiscal Officer, Community Library (Sunbury, Ohio) and Jessica Venturo, Applications Support Specialist, Bibliomation, Inc.
4:30 p.m.
Evergreen Executive Oversight Board meeting – Salons 5-7
6:40 to 8:45 p.m.
Trivia Night at Tommy Doyle’s pub
Come joins us for a game of pub trivia that starts at 7 PM at Tommy Doyle’s pub. We will meet at 6:40 in front of the Starbucks at the hotel lobby, then we will walk to the bar.
Thursday, March 20
8 to 9 a.m.
Continental Breakfast sponsored by Equinox Software, Inc.
9 to 9:15 a.m.
Welcome Address
9:15 to 9:30 a.m.
State of Evergreen
Download Presentation (PDF) – Holly Brennan
Download Presentation (PPTX) – Ruth Frasur
Download Presentation (PDF) – Chris Sharp
9:30 to 10:30 a.m.
Keynote Address from David Weinberger
10:30 to 11 a.m.
Morning Break
11 to 11:45 a.m.
It’s Funny Afterwards: Technical Tales of Tragedy… and Recovery
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, Implementation Manager, Equinox Software, Inc. and Rogan Hamby, SCLENDS
Patron Exceeds Fine Threshold: An End-User Look at Patron Billing
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.
Presenters: Erica Rohlfs, Education Librarian, Equinox Software, Inc. and Dawn Dale, PINES Helpdesk Manager, Georgia Public Library Service
Evergreen Welcome Panel
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 and see how you can get involved!
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 Program Manager, State Library of North Carolina; John Clark, Librarian, Maine Balsam Libraries Consortium; Mike Rylander, Director of Research & Development, Equinox Software, Inc.; Grace Dunbar, Vice President, Equinox Software Inc.; Jim Keenan, Library Applications Supervisor, C/W MARS; and Elizabeth McKinney, PINES Program Director, Georgia Public Library Service.
11:45 to 1:15 p.m.
Lunch-Arounds in Kendall Square
1:15 to 2:00 p.m.
Consider the KPAC: Implement and Customize the Children’s Catalog
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.; and Amy Terlaga, Assistant Director, User Services, Bibliomation, Inc.
The Import/Export Business: Working with Vandelay in Evergreen
MARC Batch Import in Evergreen, also known as Vandelay, allows the import of MARC records and holdings into your catalog. In this session, we will walk through the process of uploading and importing MARC records in Evergreen. We will discuss how to set up and use Merge/Overlay Profiles, Record Match Sets, and Holdings Import Profiles. This session will also cover how to export records from Evergreen. You will leave this session with an understanding of how to set up and effectively use MARC Batch Import to achieve an efficient cataloging workflow for your library.
Presenter: Angela Kilsdonk, Education Manager, Equinox Software, Inc.
Training Interest Group
Get together with other Evergreen trainers to share curriculum, tips and tools of the trade. The Training Interest group is open to any and all trainers in Evergreen libraries or consortia who want to share information and learn from their counterparts. Be sure to bring your horror stories as this group can commiserate! Here are some of the agenda items we plan to address at the Evergreen International Conference:
- Discuss training efforts at each institution and provide examples of curriculum if possible.
- What strengths and challenges do you encounter?
- What software or techniques work best for your audience?
- How do you approach updating your curriculum each time you upgrade?
- Brainstorm ideas on how to better collaborate on training efforts on an international level.
Facilitator: Shauna Borger, Professional Development Office Supervisor, Indiana State Library
2:15 to 3:00 p.m.
Let’s Get Cooking: How to Spice Up Your Receipt Recipes
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, Inc.
Sys Admin Interest Group
The Evergreen Sys Admin Interest Group has met regularly every conference and is intended for those interested in or working with server or local system administration related to Evergreen, Linux, and many other magical things. With our emphasis on small group discussions, everyone is welcome to come participate, ask questions, and share their cool approaches to solving problems.
Facilitators: Chris Sharp, PINES System Administrator, Georgia Public Library Service and Ben Shum, Evergreen Systems Manager, Bibliomation, Inc.
Assessment of Staff Needs and Satisfaction in an Evergreen Environment
Planning the future of Evergreen in your library or consortium? Are you listening to everyone? Gaining perspective and buy-in from all users is crucial to the successful implementation of your plan. This session focuses on the assessment of staff needs and satisfaction, from the director’s office to the circulation desk. A summary of NC Cardinal’s own initiative from conception to completion provides a backdrop to the key elements of conducting such an assessment. Attendees will leave with practical information for administering a survey, including articulating assessment objectives, designing an Evergreen-centric survey instrument, marketing the survey, obtaining results, and interpreting the data.
Presenter: David Green, NC Cardinal Data Specialist, State Library of North Carolina
3:00 to 3:30 p.m.
Afternoon Snack Break sponsored by Merrimack Valley Library Consortium (MVLC)
3:30 to 4:00 p.m.
Lightning Talks – New Features
4:15 to 5 p.m.
License to ILL: How Equinox Turned Evergreen 2.0 Into FulfILLment™, an Open Source Resource Sharing Platform
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, Inc. and Bill Erickson, Senior Developer, Equinox Software, Inc.
Cataloging Interest Group
Anyone interested in discussing the Cataloging Module is invited to join. We will discuss use of the module, workflows and best practices, existing bugs, future development, documentation, and more.
Facilitators: J. Elaine Hardy, PINES and Collaborative Projects Manager, Georgia Public Library Service, and Beth Longwell, Systems Manager, Sage Library System.
Being the Cat-herder: Managing an Open Source Software Release
Download Presentation (Zipped HTML)
Evergreen 2.5 Release Manager Dan Wells (Library Programmer/Analyst at Calvin College) and Koha 3.14 Release Manager Galen Charlton (Implementation Manager at Equinox) will discuss the fine art of release management, including how to coordinate the efforts of contributors to an open source ILS without being the big boss, when to say yes, and when to say no. Attendees will gain an understanding of how a release gets formed and how both users and developers can help.
Presenters: Galen Charlton, Implementation Manager, Equinox Software, Inc. and Daniel Wells, Library Programmer/Analyst at Calvin College
5:00 p.m.
Welcome Reception, sponsored by the Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative (MassLNC)
Friday, March 21
8:00 to 9:00 a.m.
Continental Breakfast, sponsored by OverDrive
9:00 to 9:30 a.m.
Evergreen Oversight Board Update
Download Presentation (Zipped HTML)
9:45 to 10:30 a.m.
Evergreen Is Not an Island: Sharing Lessons From and With Other Projects
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, Implementation Manager, Equinox Software, Inc.
How to Write Clear Development Requirements and Bug Reports
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, Georgia Public Library Service and Grace Dunbar, V.P., Equinox Software, Inc.
Acquisitions Interest Group
Are you currently using acquisitions? In the process of implementing acquisitions? Just curious about acquisitions in Evergreen? If so, the Acquisitions Interest Group is for you.
Anyone interested in discussing the Acquisitions Module is invited to join. We will be talking about current use of the acquisitions module, workflows and best practices, existing bugs, future development, documentation of the module, and more.
Facilitator: Jennifer Pringle, Sitka Support, BC Libraries Cooperative
10:30 to 11 a.m.
Morning Break
11 to 11:45 a.m.
Batches, Buckets and Bookbags
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 update records, make lists and manage displays, summer reading and other special projects.
Presenter: Elizabeth B. Thomsen, MB (Master of Bucketology), Member Services Manager, NOBLE: North of Boston Library Exchange
Mutually Assured Quality
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. Jason Etheridge, Support Manager at Equinox Services, Inc. will go over different QA processes, and focus 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. In addition, Denish Patel from OmniTI, the company that performed a performance audit for Evergreen last fall, will talk about database monitoring instrumentation and other performance metrics.
Presenters: Jason Etheridge, Support Manager, Equinox Services, Inc. and Denish Patel, Database Architect, OmniTI
Tiny Budget, Abundant Results: Creating an Online Catalog at Georgia’s Governor’s Mansion with Evergreen
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.
Presenters: J. Elaine Hardy, PINES and Collaborative Projects Manager, Georgia Public Library Service, and Chris Sharp, PINES System Administrator, Georgia Public Library Service
11:45 to 1:15 p.m.
Lunch on your own in Kendall Square
1:15 to 2:00 p.m.
Authority Control in Evergreen: The Straight Dope
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.
Presenters: Mike Rylander, Director of Research and Development, Equinox Software, Inc. and Angela Kilsdonk, Education Manager, Equinox Software, Inc.
Reports Interest Group
Join us for a spirited discussion on the Evergreen reports module, running reports in SQL, and other methods for getting information out of Evergreen. Anyone interested in reports is welcome to attend.
Facilitator: Jessica Venturo, Applications Support Specialist, Bibliomation, Inc.
Evergreen Availability Monitoring
This workshop is for Evergreen system administrators who want to decrease their reaction time to incidents within their Evergreen systems, manage small incidents before they become critical, and get more sleep at night knowing that everything is running smoothly. Although the focus is on Nagios, the intention is to discuss principles of monitoring, using Nagios as an example.
Presenter: Michael Tate, Equinox Software, Inc.
2:15 to 3:00 p.m.
Three (Dozen) Is a Crowd — Deduplication
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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, Implementation Manager, Equinox Software, Inc.
A Practical Serials Walkthrough
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.
Presenters: Erica Rohlfs, Education Librarian, Equinox Software, Inc. and Bill Erickson, Senior Software Developer, Equinox Software, Inc.
Is Getting There Half the Fun? Leadership and Change Management from Top to Bottom in Migrating to Evergreen
Leading and managing through a migration to Evergreen can be a challenge at all levels of a library system, whether at a consortial center or an individual institution. The needs of everyone engaged in the migration process cover ground that may not be familiar to everyone, may call on people to adopt new attitudes and behaviors, and go beyond good project planning and solid technical expertise. How do you deal with all of it? In this session, drawing on the experience of multiple Evergreen migrations and successful leadership and change management practices, you will get a comprehensive toolkit to take away covering each level and every phase of a migration from conception to post-rollout. The session will address the top to bottom needs of those charged with leading and managing change within various levels of organizations and between partners in a consortial settings.
Presenter: Jim Keenan, Library Applications Supervisor, C/W MARS and business consultant who has worked with several organizations, including the Integral Institute.
3:00 to 3:30 p.m.
Afternoon Snack Break, sponsored by Bibliomation, Inc.
3:30 to 4 p.m.
Lightning Talks
Download Presentation (PDF) – eg14_Intro-to-IRC-for-EG-Community.pdf
Download Presentation (PPTX) – eg14_Stemming-in-Evergreen-Search.pptx
4:15 to 5 p.m.
Structured Library Data: Holdings, Libraries, and Beyond
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Since the 2.2 release, Evergreen has published schema.org structured data from the TPAC by default, enabling search engines to understand what bibliographic records are available at your libraries. But important pieces, such as copy-level data, were missing. In this session, learn what Dan Scott has done with Evergreen as part of the W3C schema.org Bibliographic Extension community group efforts to publish more complete structured library data on the web. We’ll show how the data that your library already manages in Evergreen–such as holdings, hours of operation, and branch locations–can be expressed in the schema.org vocabulary, and explore what that means for the future of libraries.
Presenter: Dan Scott, Systems Librarian, Laurentian University
Authorities Interest Group
Do you need more information about Authorities? Come join us for discussion on the latest innovations and practices in Evergreen. We’ll also talk about the use of Authority Control in cataloging and the OPAC, workflows, improvements, bugs and documentation.
Facilitator: Laurie Kulik, Database Manager, Merrimack Valley Library Consortium
Academic Reserves with a Drizzle of Syrup
With 20 academic libraries in two different library consortia, MassLNC had a need for a solid course reserves system before moving to Evergreen. The Syrup Course Reserves System, developed by Art Rhyno and Graham Fawcett at the University of Windsor (Conifer), offered a full-featured solution for a reserves management system that was also tightly integrated with Evergreen. Library staff can scan item barcodes to add titles to a course reserves list; update Evergreen parameters (circ modifiers, copy locations, call numbers) from the Syrup interface; and authentic users against the Evergreen database. This session will provide an overview of Syrup, including initial installation and configuration, integration with Evergreen, and daily workflow for using Syrup in a library.
Presenter: Kathy Lussier, Coordinator, Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative (MassLNC)
Friday Evening Activities
5:45 p.m.
Dine-Arounds
Meet in front of the Starbucks in the hotel lobby.
8:00 p.m.
Pub Crawl
Meet in Mead Hall bar, 4 Cambridge Center, around the corner of the hotel.
Saturday, March 22
8:00 to 9:00 a.m.
Continental Breakfast, sponsored by Emerald Data Networks
9:00 to 9:30 a.m.
Developer Update
9:30 to 10:30 a.m.
Exploring a Browser-Based Staff Client
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 Software, Inc.
10:50 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Taking the Ack Out of Acquisitions
This session will provide an in-depth look into using the Acquisitions Module. We’ll cover the initial administrative set-up, typical selecting, ordering, receiving, and invoicing workflows, and running fiscal year end. Looking at 2.4 or later.
Presenters: Jennifer Pringle, Sitka Support, BC Libraries Cooperative and Tim Spindler, Manager of Library Applications, C/W MARS
SQL for Librarians
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: Rogan Hamby, SCLENDS