Wednesday | Thursday | Friday| Saturday
Wednesday, May 13
9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Developers Hackfest (Mountainview Room)
Sponsored by Equinox
Documentation Hackfest (Riverview Room a.m, Cebu Lounge p.m.)
1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
SQL: There and Back Again (Riverview Room)
Every time you have to learn something it’s an adventure. Some adventures involve running from dragons. Usually it involves staring at a scream and muttering unkind things. However, you don’t have to go wandering off without a map. In this workshop we will go over some basic of SQL queries in the Evergreen database and step through some practical reports step by step.
Presenter: Rogan Hamby, Operations Director SCLENDS / Headquarters Manager York County Library System
Thursday, May 14
7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.
Breakfast (Gorge Room)
Sponsored by BC Libraries Cooperative
Consortium leaders meeting (Gorge Room)
9 to 9:15 a.m.
Welcome Address and Announcements (Gorge Room)
9:15 to 9:30 a.m.
State of Evergreen (Gorge Room) [slides for State of Initiatives and Outreach; slides for State of Evergreen Development]
9:30 to 10:30 a.m.
Keynote Address by Joseph Janes (Gorge Room)
Sponsored by Hood River County Library District
10:30 to 11 a.m.
Morning Break
11 to 11:45 a.m.
Taboo: Circulation Policy Modifications (Columbia Room)
Not really taboo…in this overview, we’ll take a look at modifying an existing Evergreen circulation policy, where we’ll discuss some of the under-utilized options within the circulation policies. We will tie Circulation Limit Sets in with those policies and take a look at the default Circulation Matchpoint Weights within Evergreen.
Presenter: Erica Rohlfs (erohlfs@esilibrary.com), Project Manager, Equinox Software, Inc. (ESI)
Oh! The Places Acquisitions Can Go! (Riverview Room)
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go. You’ll get mixed up of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that life’s a great balancing act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)
-Oh the Places You’ll Go, Dr. Seuss.
Acquisitions users have long development wish lists. In this session, we will facilitate a discussion of Acquisitions users’ top ten development wishes and produce a collaborative, prioritized development list of five. We will also begin requirements and use case gathering to prepare a requirements document for the community to share and use while seeking development funding and to propel Acquisitions forward in a way that will benefit the entire community.
Presenters: Leslie St. John, Georgia Public Library Service, PINES Acquisitions Consultant, lstjohn@georgialibraries.org; J. Elaine Hardy, Georgia Public Library Services, PINES & Collaborative Projects Manager, ehardy@georgialibraries.org
Running with the Bulls: “Master”ing Production (Mountainview Room)
Administering Evergreen and keeping up to date with the latest features and bug fixes can be complicated with so many changes and upgrade scripts between major versions. Come learn from two leading organizations who operate on the cutting (bleeding!) edge of Evergreen development by tracking master using git and see what common pitfalls and, more importantly, triumphs can result from living life a little more dangerously.
Presenters: Benjamin Shum (bshum@biblio.org), Evergreen Systems Manager, Bibliomation and Jason Stephenson (jstephenson@mvlc.org), Assistant Director for Technology Services, Merrimack Valley Library Consortium (MVLC)
11:45 to 1:45 p.m.
Lunch (around town)
Acquisitions Interest Group Lunch Time Meeting
Facilitator: Christine Burns
1:45 to 2:15 p.m.
Lightning Talks (Gorge Room)
- Evergreen Book Carousels by Blake Graham-Henderson [slides]
- Documentation: Success Counts on You! by Lynn Floyd [slides]
- Evergreen Overdrive API Integration by Christine Burns [slides]
2:30 to 3:15 p.m.
Cataloging Interest Group (Riverview Room)
Come and join the discussion on cataloging in Evergreen
Facilitators: Elaine Hardy, Beth Longwell
Keep Calm and Self-Check On (Columbia Room) [slides]
Are your libraries looking for an easy and cost-effective self-check solution? Do you believe an Evergreen self-check set up is difficult or requires new equipment? Learn from two library consortiums many of the ins and outs of what it takes to implement an Evergreen self-check kiosk. This discussion will help demystify the hardware and software requirements needed to run a functional self-check machine, offer ideas for the set up of custom self-check receipt templates, as well provide tips on how to improve the overall self-check experience for patrons.
Presenters: Melissa Ceraso (mceraso@biblio.org) Evergreen Systems Specialist, Bibliomation, and Brent Mills (brent@hoodriverlibrary.org), Systems Librarian, Sage Library System
An Introduction to Automated Evergreen Configuration with Ansible (Mountainview Room)
Building a large Evergreen installation can involve installing various components on many servers. How do you do this consistently without making mistakes? Scripts are one way, but how do you make further changes to the system without keeping a large library of scripts that have to be run in just the right order? A configuration management system can automate everything from virtual machine provisioning to updating your OPAC templates, while being idempotent means that changes can be made at any time and the system will always end up in the expected state. This talk will focus on using the Ansible management system but most of the concepts apply to other popular systems such as Puppet, Chef, and Salt.
Presenter: Jason Boyer (jboyer@library.in.gov), MIS Supervisor / Evergreen Indiana System Administrator, Indiana State Library / Evergreen Indiana
3:30 to 4:15 p.m.
Welcome to the Evergreen Community (Mountainview Room) [slides]
This session is intended for new members to the Evergreen community. Ever wonder what mailing list is right for what question? Ever wonder what the heck IRC is? Who owns Evergreen? Who are these vendors and are they your vendor and what do they do? What do other libraries do? How does it all fit together? We can’t promise to answer every question but from a short review of the history of Evergreen to the current community at large we will give an overview of Evergreen the community rather than the software, with plenty of time for questions and attempted answers.
Presenters: Rogan Hamby (rogan.hamby@yclibrary.net), SCLENDS &York County Library System, Yamil Suarez, (ysuarez@berklee.edu), Berklee College of Music, Grace Dunbar (gdunbar@esilibrary.com), Equinox Software, Andrea Buntz Neiman (aneiman@kent.lib.md.us), Kent County Public Library
Making the Most of Evergreen Reports (Columbia Room) [slides and handout]
Evergreen’s built-in report-creating feature is powerful, extensible, and allows for very fine-grained and targeted data retrieval. This session covers the design of the reports interface and how you can select and join together the best sources you can for your libraries’ reporting needs. We’ll peek under the hood some so you’ll understand better how Evergreen reports work from the database up. Includes practical real-life examples gleaned from years of supporting and troubleshooting PINES reports.
Presenter: Chris Sharp (csharp@georgialibraries.org), PINES System Administrator, Georgia Public Library Service
Oh CRUD, my API has a Flesh Wound (Riverview Room) [slides]
Evergreen provides a bevy of ways to access and control data within the ILS. As the system matures and evolves, developers strive to create faster, lighter, and more flexible APIs for building interfaces, programmatic system interaction (scripting, etc.), and improving 3rd-party integration.
To shed light on the current state of the art in Evergreen, I’ll review of some of the newer API components (PCRUD, flat fielder, etc.), focusing primarily on those used with the new browser client, do a quick recap of the Evergreen IDL, and discuss how we control API access with permissions, etc.
Presenter: Bill Erickson (berickxx@gmail.com), Software Development Engineer, King County Library System
4:15 to 4:45 p.m.
Afternoon Break
4:45 to 5:30 p.m.
Reports Interest Group (Columbia Room)
Come and join us for discussion on reports.
Facilitator: Jessica Venturo, Bibliomation
Hiding Deep in the Woods: Reader Privacy and Evergreen (Riverview Room) [slides]
Protecting the privacy of our patrons and their reading and information seeking is a core library value – but one that can be achieved only through constant vigilance. We’ll discuss techniques for keeping an Evergreen system secure from leaks of patron data; policies on how much personally identifying information to keep, and for how long; and how to integrate Evergreen with other software securely.
Presenter: Galen Charlton (gmc@esilibrary.com), Infrastructure and Added Services Manager, Equinox Software
Metadata and Maps (Mountainview Room) [slides and Git repo]
Library data contains a wealth of well-curated information. The level of detail within even a simple MARC record far exceeds most metadata used to describe items found in popular online websites. Additionally, anonymized circulation data can help libraries plan their collections and service patron needs.
This presentation will describe the process of extracting a big data set from The Co-op’s shared Sitka catalogue and the methods used to publish it as open data. We will explore how this open data intersects with other open data sets published by government and other organizations. Finally, conference attendees will be shown how to use this open data to visualize knowledge to make strategic decisions.
For example, subject headings are rich metadata within MARC; subject headings can illustrate collection concentrations across the different libraries within Sitka. Circulation data can show borrowing patterns and interests. Both of these data sets can interact with other geographic and government open data sets for interesting, and sometimes surprising, results.
Presenter: Liam Whalen (liam.whalen@bc.libraries.coop), Systems Specialist, The BC Libraries Cooperative
5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Reception (Gorge Room)
7:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Evergreen Oversight Board Meeting (Mt. Hood Room)
Friday, May 15
7:30 to 9:00 a.m.
Breakfast (Gorge Room)
Sponsored by PaILS
Consortium Leaders Meeting (Gorge Room)
9:00 to 9:30 a.m.
Evergreen Oversight Board Update (Gorge Room)
9:45 to 10:30 a.m.
Receipt Template Magic (Columbia Room)
You don’t need to know code to spice up your receipt templates. This program will walk you through step by step on how to copy what you want and paste it where it goes in the receipt template editor. Full receipt examples will be shown with what you need to do to make them look professional and amazing.
Presenter: Tina Jordan (tjordan@chestateelibrary.org), Assistant Director, Chestatee Regional Library System, Member of the Georgia PINES System
Prepare to Share! (Riverview Room)
Download Presentation (Powerpoint)
Join us for an inside look at the benefits and mechanics of resource sharing within a public library consortium using Evergreen. Since beginning resource sharing in 2013, the growing NC Cardinal consortium has shipped an average of 90,000 items a month among member libraries who share a single online catalog. This presentation will detail how it all happens with a focus on implementing a new resource sharing workflow, including a look at the patron experience, streamlining movement of materials, tracking, and reporting. We will also discuss how to protect parts of your collection based on age or format, as well as the strategy of opportunistic holds and soft stalling intervals. An overview of best practices will be provided along with examples of tools to track all incoming and outgoing items, creating transit reports, gathering statistics, and providing administrative updates.
Presenter: Jennifer Dale (daleji@forsyth.cc) and Jonathan Furr (furrjt@forsyth.cc), Technical Services, Forsyth County Public Library (NC Cardinal)
Troubleshooting with Evergreen Server Logs (Mountainview Room) [handout]
Your helpdesk is filling up with requests that all say “Evergreen is acting CRAZY!” and you’re at the end of your rope about what to do next. Never fear, because the servers are telling you all kinds of things that can help you see what’s going wrong. Master the art of Linux and Evergreen log diving to help you keep your library’s favorite open source ILS stable and your users happy. Targeted towards Evergreen system administrators.
Presenter: Chris Sharp (csharp@georgialibraries.org), PINES System Administrator, Georgia Public Library Service
10:30 to 11 a.m.
Morning Break
11 to 11:45 a.m.
James Bond 007 on Blu-ray (Columbia Room)
We’ll discuss the use of the Physical Characteristic Wizard to create or edit your 007 MARC tags and how this can help make your Format Icons appear in the OPAC. We’ll also take a look at how to make small adjustments to the wording displayed alongside those Format Icons.
Presenter: Erica Rohlfs (erohlfs@esilibrary.com), Project Manager, Equinox Software, Inc. (ESI)
Getting what you want in your next development project (Riverview Room) [slides]
Hooray! You’ve finally raised the funds you need for the new enhancement you want to roll into Evergreen. You contract with a developer, the work is done, and, after taking a quick look at it, you approve the final project, looking forward to the day when you upgrade to a release where you can use the feature. When the time arrives, though, you discover that it doesn’t work exactly the way you expected or contains bugs that weren’t discovered in light testing. In this session, we’ll look at ways to make sure you really get what you want out of your next development project by learning how to clearly communicate project requirements and how to thoroughly test the final code.
Presenter: Kathy Lussier (klussier@masslnc.org), Project Coordinator, Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
Sys Admin Interest Group (Mountainview Room)
Come join fellow staff for discussion on a variety of systems topics.
Facilitators: Chris Sharp, Ben Shum
11:45 to 1:45 p.m.
Lunch (around town)
1:45 to 2:15 p.m.
Lightning Talks (Gorge Room)
2:30 to 3:15 p.m.
Acquisitions Rodeo, Part 2: EDI Wrangling (Riverview Room)
Download Presentation (PDF)
EDI allows users of the Evergreen Acquisitions module to seamlessly send purchase orders to vendors and receive order-related messages and invoices directly in the ILS. During this session we will cover the administrative staff client setup for EDI in Evergreen. Topics will include the configuration of Provider accounts and EDI accounts, as well as a discussion of the server level configuration needed to enable Evergreen to send and receive EDI messages. We will also cover a basic acquisitions workflow that illustrates the use of EDI, including copy overlay.
Presenter: Angela Kilsdonk (akilsdonk@esilibrary.com), Education Manager, Equinox Software
Adding Data Sources to the Reporter (Mountainview Room) [slides]
The reporter is a flexible tool for accessing the Evergreen database but why be limited to the ingrained ILS data? We will discuss when it makes sense to add a new data source, what kinds of data can be added and who you will need on your team to make it happen and take advantage of it. We will talk about the roles of technical and non-technical staff in the planning. As we do we will look at different practical examples of extending your database such as simplifying complex reports, easy to reference historic data and adding poverty rates and census growth.
Presenter: Rogan Hamby (rogan.hamby@yclibrary.net), Operations Director, SCLENDS & Headquarters Manager, York County Library System
Angling for a new Staff Interface (Columbia Room) [slides]
The forthcoming web-based staff interface for Evergreen uses a JavaScript framework called AngularJS. AngularJS offers a number of ways to ease putting new interfaces together quickly such as tight integration of promises/deferred objects, extending HTML via local directives, and an integrated test framework – and can help make Evergreen UI development (even more) fun. During this presentation, which will include some hands-on exercise, Bill, Mike and Galen will give an introduction to AngularJS with a focus on how it’s used in Evergreen. By the end of the session, attendees have gained knowledge that they can immediately apply to working on Evergreen’s web staff interface. To perform the exercises, attendees are expected to be familiar with JavaScript .
Presenters: Bill Erickson (berickxx@gmail.com), Software Development Engineer, King County Library System; Mike Rylander (miker@esilibrary.com), President, Equinox Software; Galen Charlton (gmc@esilibrary.com), Infrastructure and Added Services Manager, Equinox Software
3:30 to 4:15 p.m.
To Float or Not to Float: A consortium’s play-by-play to implement floating groups (Mountainview Room)
Download Presentation (Powerpoint)
Several library systems within NC Cardinal used the float flag feature within Evergreen. It wasn’t enough! Our libraries requested a variety of floating scenarios – items that stay wherever they land, items that return to the home library, and items that only float between specific branches. Our libraries switched to using floating groups once they became available within Evergreen. This session examines the need for floating groups, explains how floating groups work, describes the issues that we encountered during implementation, and highlights points to consider before implementation. Attendees will leave with a basic understanding of floating group logic and practical examples of their application.
Presenters: Tanya Prokrym (tanya.prokrym@ncdcr.gov), Program Manager, NC Cardinal, State Library of North Carolina and Elisabeth Keppler (keppleep@forsyth.cc), Technical Services Supervisor, Forsyth County Public Library (NC Cardinal)
Evergreen and Design: From UX to UI (Riverview Room)
A piece of software is only as good as its user interface (UI). With no UI, a program is useless, and a bad interface can make it even worse, taking it from worthless to destructive. But what are some elements of good UI design, and how can they lead to a better user experience (UX)? In this session we will introduce some fundamental design principles, explore specific recommendations from experts in human-computer interaction, and see how some of these ideas might be applied to both the nascent web staff client and future Evergreen interfaces.
Presenter: Dan Wells (dbw2@calvin.edu), Library Programmer/Analyst, Hekman Library (Calvin College)
Evergreen Search Tune-up: Tips and tricks to taking the default search indexes and making them more awesome (Columbia Room) [slides]
Evergreen offers sites a lot of flexibility in adjusting the default indexes that are used for search. In this session, MassLNC Project Coordinator Kathy Lussier will offer a peak into the database to demonstrate how the default search indexes are configured, show where to go when determining why a particular search didn’t work as expected, and discuss the factors that make some records more relevant than others on the results page. She’ll also demonstrate how to configure new indexes, either to accommodate a field not covered by the default index or to make specific MARC fields more relevant than others.
Presenter: Kathy Lussier (klussier@masslnc.org), Project Coordinator, Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
4:15 to 4:45 p.m.
Afternoon Break
4:45 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Authorities Interest Group + Authority Control in Evergreen (Mountainview Room)
Meeting of the Authorities Interest Group will begin with an overview of how authority control works in Evergreen and how to best to make use of the advanced capabilities that Evergreen provides. Potential topics for the session include 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 (miker@esilibrary.com), President, Equinox Software and Angela Kilsdonk (akilsdonk@esilibrary.com, Education Manager, Equinox Software
Badges? We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges! or: How to Encourage Participation (Riverview Room) [slides]
How can your organization get more people excited about the opportunities available to participate in the design, testing, documentation, governance, and general love of Evergreen? We will focus on ways to create a local environment that will foster and reward participation. We will explore all the wonderful ways in which the average Evergreen user can contribute to the improvement of the project and what organizations can do to support them. No SQL, git, Perl, or IRC required.
Presenter: Grace Dunbar (grace@esilibrary.com), Vice President, Equinox Software
Catalog: What A Mess! (Columbia Room) [slides]
Do you suffer from large print syndrome? Do you experience 856 pains from the subfield z? Do you wake up and find that your DVD icons have decided to be phonograph? Have you noticed that search results look redundant? Then this is for you! I am sure we all struggle to keep items attached to the right things. This is a programmatic approach to solve the problem. We will speak in detail about how we solved this issue and created software to distill the information. We would like to share the employed algorithms that we used to turn perl and SQL into a catalog cleanup aid. We will show code and queries so bring your code parser and query planner TI-85.
Presenters: Blake GH (blake@mobiusconsortium.org) Justin Hopkins (justin@mobiusconsortium.org), Evergreen Programmer / IT Manager, MOBIUS – Missouri Evergreen Consortium
Saturday, May 16
7:30 to 9:00 a.m.
Breakfast (Gorge Room)
9:00 to 9:30 a.m.
Developer Update (Gorge Room) [slides]
9:30 to 10:00 a.m.
Web Client Update (Gorge Room) [slides]
10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
Morning break
10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Easiest OPAC Setup Ever (Mountainview Room)
Do you use the oldest computers in your library for your OPACs? Do those computers run at a snail’s pace? Are your patrons always complaining about slowness? There is a better way! See how easy and inexpensive it is to use a Chromebox for your OPACs. You will never use an old computer again!
Presenter: Tina Jordan (tjordan@chestateelibrary.org), Assistant Director, Chestatee Regional Library System, Member of the Georgia PINES System
Lifecycle of an Evergreen Bug (Riverview Room)
Our Evergreen community tracks software bugs via the Launchpad website. How do you use Launchpad to report bugs? What else do you need to say or include when reporting bugs to the community? How do bugs get fixed? How do you track the status of bug fixes? These questions and more will be answered by community bug experts with an eye on noting potential problems with our current bug reporting process and looking towards establishing best practices for the future.
Presenter: Benjamin Shum (bshum@biblio.org), Evergreen Systems Manager, Bibliomation, Erica Rohlfs (erohlfs@esilibrary.com), Project Manager, Equinox Software, Inc. (ESI)
Jane in the Forest: Starting to do Linked Data with Evergreen (Columbia Room) [slides]
Linked Data has been on the radar of librarians for years, but unless one is already working with RDF triple-stores and the like, it can be a little hard to see how the Linked Data future will look like for ILSs. Adapting some of the ideas of the original Jane-athon [http://www.rdatoolkit.org/janeathon] session at ALA Midwinter 2015 in Chicago, we will go through an exercise of putting together small sets of RDA metadata as RDF… then seeing how that data can be used in the Evergreen. By the end, attendees will have learned a bit not just about the theory of Linked Data, but how working with it can work in practice.
Presenter: Galen Charlton (gmc@esilibrary.com), Infrastructure and Added Services Manager, Equinox Software Inc.