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Quick LinksConference Home |
| Links to program presentation slides and other shared materials will be posted to this page after the conference. |
See the conference Program Schedule for a grid view of the programs scheduled for each day of the conference.
Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday
Wednesday, April 8, 2026 (Pacific Time)
PRE-CONFERENCE SESSIONS (additional registration fee required)
9:30am
Leadership: Planning for the Future of our Systems, People, and Open-Source Projects
This 2026 Evergreen Pre-conference session invites leaders at all levels of the organization into a facilitated, participatory conversation about planning for the future of our systems, our people, and the open-source projects we steward together. Grounded in real leadership challenges, the session will explore how emerging technologies, especially AI, are reshaping decision-making, sustainability, governance, and values within library and consortium environments. Participants will reflect on near- and long-term strategy, share perspectives across roles and experience levels, and collectively surface questions, opportunities, and risks that should inform Evergreen’s future direction. The focus is not on arriving at a single answer, but on strengthening our shared leadership capacity to navigate uncertainty with intention, curiosity, and collaboration.
Presenter: BJ Colvin, Director of Information Technology Services, King County Library System
Carrying Both Ends of the Conversation: How to Develop for Both Aspen Discovery and Evergreen
“Evergreen and Aspen Discovery work great together, but the integration can always be improved. However, in order to improve that integration, it can be really convenient to be able to fully control both sides.
During this session, Galen Charlton will guide participants through how to set up and use a development environment to code for both Evergreen and Aspen Discovery simultaneously. In the course of the pre-conference, at least one actual integration improvement will be made. Participants will also have an opportunity to work on selected “bite-size” integration improvements.
Participants should be comfortable with the Linux command line and have at least some experience with coding.
Presenter: Galen Charlton, Equinox Open Library Initiative
Getting Started in EG Dev – DIG Hackfest
Presenters: Jane Sandberg, Community Member; Bill Erickson, King County Library System
12:00-1:30pm Lunch
1:30pm
Two Roads to Enlightenment: Journeys in Strategic Planning from Two Library Consortia (slides)
Join two library consortium leaders in a retrospective of their strategic planning processes. Each organization chose a different path for creating their plans; Evergreen Indiana developed their plan with the help of a consultant, while C/W MARS formed committees to take on the work. You will hear about why each organization chose their approach, how they gathered the information to create their plans, how the plans were written, and lessons learned along the way. This is a 90 minute session.
Presenters: Courtney Brown, Evergreen Indiana Library Consortium; Jeanette Lundgren, C/W MARS, Inc.
Taming Evergreen (slides)
Ever wanted to edit Evergreen yourself? Now you can! With this simple step by step guide, you will have everything you need. Come join us won’t you? We’ll go over the steps for setting up the Evergreen server on your computer. We will go over editing the Evergreen documentation as well as the Evergreen server application. You will be able to see your changes live! We’ll focus on Windows environment, though these techniques can be applied to a Linux OS.
Presenter: Blake Graham-Henderson, MOBIUS
Dev & DIG Hackfest
Thursday, April 9, 2026 (Pacific Time)
7:30 – 9:00am Breakfast
8:00 – 8:45am
Acquisitions Interest Group
Presenter: Tiffany Little, PINES
Evergreen Admin Working Group, Permissions Working Group and Reports Interest
Presenters: Elizabeth Davis, PaILS and Susan Morrison, PINES
9:00 – 9:30am
Welcome and Announcements
9:30 – 10:00am
Keynote – Heidi Daniel – Executive Director King County Library System
Heidi Daniel took the helm as Executive Director of King County Library System (KCLS) in March 2024, bringing a wealth of experience and a passion for innovation. With 50 community libraries KCLS, serves over 1.6 million people and is the third-highest digital circulating library system in the world. Daniels’ career began with transformative children’s and teen programming in Oklahoma City and Houston, before she ascended to library administration.
Prior to joining KCLS, Daniel led the Enoch Pratt Free Library for over six years, where she championed accessibility by eliminating fines, making it one of the first public library systems on the East Coast to do so. Under her leadership, the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore was celebrated as one of the “Nicest Places in America” by Good Morning America and Reader’s Digest.
Daniel has received numerous accolades, including the Maryland Most Admired CEOs award in 2023 and Ohio Librarian of the Year in 2015.At KCLS, Daniel aims to build upon its strong foundation with innovative and inclusive strategies, reflecting her dedication to making libraries vital community resources accessible to all.
10:30 – 10:55am Morning Break
10:55 – 11:45am
Board/Membership Meeting (Slides)
Presenter: The Evergreen Project Board
11:45 – 1:30pm Lunch on your own
1:30 – 2:00pm
Lightning Talks
2:10 – 3:00pm
Foundational Tools: An Overview of Evergreen Project Infrastructure
A great tool such as Evergreen is built on the strength of other infrastructure, both human and technical.
During this session, Galen Charlton will provide an overview of all of the tooling that exists to support the growth of Evergreen, both as a piece of software and as a community. These tools support communications, development, documentation, and internationalization.
Attendees will leave the presentation knowing what is available to them to help them contribute to Evergreen as well as who to ask if they have questions.
Presenter: Galen Charlton, Equinox Open Library Initiative
Inventories are the mothers of retention: Inventorying collections in Evergreen (slides)
Inventories can be a fruitful but fearful undertaking for library and support staff alike, especially if there are no recent models to follow. This presentation will cover how I devised and managed a full inventory of a 100,000 item collection as the technical services librarian in a midsized public library. It will include how to configure Evergreen options for inventories and what other tools I used to track our progress and double-check our work. I will also cover practical considerations such as the benefits of an inventory compared to its cost in manpower and time.
Presenters: Chris Amorosi, NOBLE
Lost in Translation: Decoding and fixing EDI error messages (slides)
In this session, we’ll look at the Evergreen EDI process in general before diving into real EDI messages and how they correspond to settings in Evergreen. Whether you’re trying to provide a vendor with specific data to meet your library’s unique needs or you’re struggling to interpret a cryptic error message, this session will give some tips and ideas for understanding these messages. We’ll look at how to analyze the messages you’re sending and receiving, ensuring that the correct data always ends up in the correct place.
Presenter: Tiffany Little, PINES
3:00 – 3:50pm
Afternoon Break & Vendor Showcase
4:00 – 4:50pm
Using Reports to Aid in Collection Development (slides)
This will be an introduction to the Evergreen Reporter with a special emphasis on running reports for Collection Development for a general audience with little experience in reports. We will discuss the basics of selecting display fields, setting filters, and choosing the tables and core sources most relevant to collection development. By the end of the session, participant should be able to produce an item report by shelving location with circulation numbers for weeding purposes. Handouts and/or digital supplementary materials will provide help setting up a reports account and further guidance on creating and running additional reports related to collection management.
Presenters: Samantha O’Connor, NC Cardinal/State Library of North Carolina
Creating and Updating MARC Authority Records (slides)
Does your organization use Evergreen authorities? Do you have material by authors, creators, and compilers without official Library of Congress Name Authority Headings? Perhaps you have a collection of local history items that require more specialized Subject Authority Headings than are available through standard authority sources? This session will review how to create more robust MARC authority records in Evergreen, including heading, tracing, source data and notes, and linking entry fields.
Presenter: Carol Witt, C/W MARS
Small SIPS: privacy protections for ILS patron data (slides)
C/W MARS discusses their strategic journey and steps they have taken to add more privacy protections for patron ILS data. This presentation will provide a brief history of data privacy initiatives and offer an overview of SIP and the importance of taking control of data shared with third parties. It will include technical aspects of securing SIP communications through TLS/SSL and redacting patron data not needed for authentication for third-party platforms.
Presenters: Jeanette Lundgren, Chris Hancock, & Jason Stephenson, C/W MARS
6:30 – 8:30pm
Reception/Interest Group Showcase
Friday, April 10, 2026
7:30 – 9:00am Breakfast
8:00 to 8:45am
Cataloging Interest Group
Jennifer Weston, Equinox Open Library Initiative
System Admin
Chris Sharp, PINES
Consortia Leaders
Katie Greenleaf Martin, PaILS/SPARK
9:00 – 9:30am
Center Stage – Angular Circulation – What is it? (Slides)
If you’re hearing a lot, or even just a little, about Angular Circulation and wondering “What does that really mean?” then this presentation is for you. This is not a technical presentation. This is an introductory session to provide a description of what Angular is, how it is changing the way we interact with the staff interface, and demonstrate some of the changes that have already been implemented. For years the Evergreen community and its valiant developers have been working to convert Evergreen’s code to the more modern Angular application framework. Many of the Evergreen functions have already been updated and the focus is now on Circulation which will affect us all. Join us for this discussion so the next time you hear “angularize” you’ll know good things are happening (and maybe be inspired to participate in Angular Circulation testing).
Presenters: Michele Morgan, NOBLE; Bill Erickson, King County Library System
9:40 – 10:30am
Angles on Angular Circulation (Slides)
Circulation is going Angular! Many functions in Evergreen have already been rewritten in the Angular framework. The Evergreen Community has set a goal of moving circulation functions to Angular in the Fall 2026 release of Evergreen. In this session we will take a tour of the new circulation interfaces and review ways that all Evergreen community members can contribute to a smooth transition.
Presenter: Michele Morgan, NOBLE
From “Huh?” to “Aha!”: Making Training Programs That Click
Turnover. New employees. Refreshers. We all know WHY training is so necessary, but how do we make it not so daunting or boring, and maybe even fun? In this session, we will discuss training of all types, ranging from in-person to asynchronous and several options in between. Join us as we talk about how we successfully implemented a training certification program that covers nearly 80 libraries across the state, whose size ranges from larger regional libraries to single-branch systems, and how we keep those trainings up-to-date, engaging, and consistent.
Presenter: Kate Coleman, Missouri Evergreen
Developers aren’t mind readers: How to write requirements, use cases, and user stories (slides)
So, you want to commission some Evergreen development! That’s great, but, how do you communicate with developers? Translating between “librarian” and “techie” can be tricky. Writing clear requirements, use cases, and user stories is a skill and it’s one you can learn. When you learn to think of your projects in these frameworks, you’ll help developers and project managers better understand your needs and ensure you’re getting what you want out of a development project.
Presenter: Andrea Buntz Neiman, Equinox Open Library Initiative
10:30 – 10:55am
Morning Break/Snack
10:55 – 11:45am
Building Together: How Collaboration Elevates Development
So you have a great development idea to improve Evergreen – what are your next steps? It may be easiest for your organization to contract with a developer, leaving them with the details of developing something that meets your needs and getting the enhancement into the community. However, this method may not be the best or most cost-effective way to sponsor an enhancement that works for a wide variety of Evergreen libraries. Community collaboration at the early stages of a project can turn a project that works for a handful of libraries into something that addresses the needs of many. In this session, NOBLE Executive Director Kathy Lussier, who has shepherded more than 50 projects through the development process, will share tips on how to manage a development project and find co-funders, provide guidance on how to find a vendor either through a competitive procurement or other process, and lead a discussion on how we can build collaboration around these sponsored development projects.
Presenter: Kathy Lussier, NOBLE
Holding It Together: How PINES Refined Resource Sharing for a Sustainable Future (slides)
In 2025, the PINES consortium faced a critical challenge: increased patron demand and rising courier costs were quickly outpacing stagnant budget allocations. In order to cut costs without reducing service to patrons, PINES had to make difficult decisions and implement a strategic shift in hold fulfillment to prioritize local collections and reduce statewide transits.
In this session, we will share the data-driven rationale behind these changes, the process of technical implementation, and the communication strategies used to manage patron expectations. We’ll also provide an honest look at how our team and consortium collaborated during a stressful year to reevaluate processes, navigate change fatigue, and secure a sustainable future for Georgia’s PINES libraries.
Presenters: Terran McCanna & Susan Morrison, PINES
Administering Evergreen The PINES Way (slides)
A technical overview of PINES, including a history of how we got to where we are. Technical focus but also useful for non-technical attendees.
Presenter: Chris Sharp, PINES
11:45 – 1:30am Lunch on your own
1:30 – 2:20pm
Catalog Searching Skills: The Next Level (slides)
Leave the basic search bar behind and join a session led by catalogers to seek out new adventures! Learn new and different ways to search in Evergreen and transform how you interact with your search results. We’ll explore a wealth of search tabs, fields, facets, filters, checkboxes, and templates while highlighting customization possibilities and celebrating local search preferences.
Presenters: Jennifer Weston, Equinox Open Library Initiative, and Kate Coleman, Missouri Evergreen
From Opt-In to Opt-Out: Opt-In Notification Settings in Evergreen and the Quest for Clarity (slides)
Bibliomation staff members will discuss our recent experience diving into opt-in settings for notifications in Evergreen as part of our integration with a new SMS service. We will present our findings into this exploration, and present ideas about how opt-in settings could be improved to make them easier for end users to understand, and for developers and third-party services to take advantage of. We’ll end with an open discussion with input from session attendees about these ideas, and gather feedback in hopes to create a plan for future development.
Presenter: Ian Skelskey, Bibliomation, Inc.
Many Paths To Go Down: A Comparison of Evergreen and Aspen Indexing
A core aspect of any ILS or discovery layer is its indexing and search engine. Search engines can be a black box, but during this session, Galen Charlton will explain how they work by comparing how Evergreen and Aspen Discovery approach the problem.
The comparison will cover the two systems’ core search infrastructure and assumptions, how indexing is configured, and how it performs.
Attendees will leave the session with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the two systems’ approaches to the problem of library search.
Presenters: Galen Charlton & Mike Rylander, Equinox Open Library Initiative
2:30 – 3:20pm
Feeling Ruth-less: New Features in Evergreen (AKA, The Andrea and Katie Show: Pilot Episode) (slides)
Everyone’s favorite annual overview of Evergreen features has a new team at the helm! Join the Andrea and Katie Show for our pilot episode, as we take you through the highlights of the most recent Evergreen releases. (Sci-fi jokes included…)
Presenters: Andrea Buntz Neiman, Equinox Open Library Initiative & Katie Greenleaf Martin, PaILS/SPARK
Data, Dashboards, and More! (slides)
CW MARS has used the data visualization tool Metabase to offer interactive dashboards and reports to their libraries for several years. Join us as we take a look at what we’ve created and chat about how our libraries utilize their dashboards, as well as how the pages are built and maintained and Metabase is managed. The presentation may contain some discussion around SQL and server maintenance but is mainly designed with a general audience in mind.
Presenters: John Amundson & Jason Stephenson, CW MARS
Streamlining Patron Registration at KCLS
At KCLS we’re working to streamline the patron registration process so new users can more quickly and easily access digital and physical materials. The project entails creating a new user interface both to guide users through the registration options and to provide a more modern and accessible point of contact. This talk will focus primarily on the technology choices and lessons learned along the way.
Presenter: Bill Erickson, King County Library System
3:20 – 3:40pm
Afternoon Break/Snack
3:40 – 4:10pm
Lightning Talks
4:15 – 5:05pm
Beyond the Spreadsheet: Why and How to start using Acquisitions (slides)
A successful Acquisitions setup starts with the end in mind. Instead of just learning what to click, this session focuses on how your desired reporting and workflow goals should dictate your configuration. We will walk through the strategic decisions behind setting up providers and fund hierarchies by working backward from the information you need to track. Attendees will learn how to transition from manual spreadsheets to an Evergreen workflow that still fits their library’s needs.
Presenter: Tiffany Little, PINES
Batches, Baskets, Buckets
Learn about the different ways to work with batches of items and bibs in Evergreen, including item status batches, item buckets, baskets in the staff catalog, record buckets, and carousels.
Presenter: Elizabeth Thomsen, NOBLE
Spatial is Special – helping PA libraries understand where their patrons are coming from (slides)
The Pennsylvania Integrated Library System received a grant to provide accurate municipal (township, borough and city) and school district data for its libraries. Equinox Open Library Initiative partnered with PaILS to create a tool that geocodes patron addresses and updates the relevant statistical categories — making this data available via the Reports module for all PaILS libraries. We’ll discuss the reasons this data is so important to PA libraries, provide an overview of the software and services used to generate the data and chat about tools and techniques you can use to leverage geospatial data to meet your consortium’s needs.
Presenters: Katie Greenleaf Martin, PaILS/SPARK, Galen Charlton, Equinox Open Library Initiative
6:15 Dine Arounds
8:30pm Social Activity
Saturday, April 11, 2026
7:30 – 9:00am
Breakfast
9:00 – 10:00am
Developer Update (Slides)
10:00 – 10:30am Break
10:30 – 11:15am
Built to Last: What the Grateful Dead Can Teach Us About Successful Open-Source Communities
Long before the start of the Free Software Movement, the psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead was laying the groundwork by demonstrating that organizations can experience financial success even as they are freely sharing their work. The culture of sharing among Deadheads continued through the years as many became early adopters of the Internet and advocates for digital rights. In this presentation, we will learn about the history of this band, its community of Deadheads and the values they share with open-source software communities. We’ll also consider how the band’s experience can provide guidance on how our own project supports the software and encourages growth in the community.
Presenter: Kathy Lussier, NOBLE
11:15 – 12:00am
Wrap-Up Activity / Community Engagement – Table Topics
Presenters: The Evergreen Project Board