I am delighted to announce that, as of today, the Evergreen project has added another core committer. This morning, Dan Wells of the Hekman Library at Calvin College accepted our invitation to join us on the core committer team. Dan presented some of his early work on revamping serials support at the Evergreen International Conference 2010 and wowed the audience with a design that was clearly usable. If you have been following the development of Evergreen 2.0, you already know that Dan has followed through on this promising start as the driving force behind the serials support in the 2.0 release, featuring predictions, multi-library distributions, and more. His code demonstrates a sound understanding of the many layers of Evergreen, from the database schema, through the creation of new OpenSRF methods and use of data access APIs, right up to the interface level.
Those of us who have been around Evergreen for a number of years will know that Dan’s roots with Evergreen reach deep into the history of the project. His first recorded public email on record from May 2007, exemplifies Dan’s approach to the project: willing to share his knowledge and help others. Early on, Dan was responsible for creating and maintaining the Evergreen-on-Ubuntu install instructions and virtual images, and through the intervening years a new message from Dan on the mailing list meant that he was about to provide a succinct solution to a thorny technical problem. When discussing possible technical directions for new development or the enhancement of existing features, he is diplomatic and always open to other perspectives; he sets the bar high for the rest of us!
We are honoured to have Dan Wells join us as a core committer on the Evergreen project. He is talented, humble, insightful, and diplomatic, and while this post might embarrass him by its high praise of his qualities, that praise is well deserved. The Evergreen project is fortunate that Dan has chosen to contribute his time and energy to our cause.
Welcome, Dan!