Evergreen ILS

Open Source Library Software

Kathy Lussier

Evergreen Returns to ALA Annual Conference

The Evergreen community is hosting a session this weekend at the American Library Association Annual Conference & Exhibition in San Diego. The session, From User Group to Community: Software for Libraries by Libraries is scheduled for 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. PDT Saturday, June 29, at the Marriott Marquis in the Miramar Room.

Kathy Lussier, Executive Director of the North of Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE) will facilitate the panel discussion, which will include Millissa Macomber (Central Skagit Library District), Jeanette Lundgren (Central and Western Massachusetts Automated Resource Sharing), Galen Charlton (Equinox Open Library Initiative), Elizabeth Thomsen (NOBLE), and Katie Greenleaf Martin (Pennsylvania Integrated Library System). The panel will share examples of how they were able to improve staff workflows and the library user experience with software enhancements realized through the Evergreen open-source software community.
If you are attending ALA, please join us at this program and bring along your friends and colleagues!
#ALAAC24

Evergreen at ALA Annual: Open-source Software is Not Just for Tech Gurus

One appealing benefit of using open-source software is the many different options available for hosting, support and development.

A library organization with a large technical staff may choose to support the system in house while other organizations might choose to have their system hosted in the cloud by a support vendor. Still others may start with a support system that gradually changes over time as their staffing changes over time.

The Evergreen community will lead a panel discussion at the American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans that highlights the many options available to libraries running open-source systems.  Tech gurus optional: Running an open-source ILS your way will feature a panel of three Evergreen users who will discuss  the different ways their systems are hosted and supported, cover the many options that are available to open-source users, and highlight the added security that comes with not being locked into one vendor.

The panelists, who will include Meg Stroup of SC LENDS (South Carolina), Amy Terlaga of Bibliomation (Connecticut), and Elizabeth Thomsen of NOBLE (Massachusetts),  will also answer any audience questions about their experience running an open-source ILS.

Moderated by Evergreen Outreach Committee Chair Kathy Lussier, the panel discussion is scheduled from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, June 23, in Morial Convention Center, Rm 214. All attendees with an interest in open source are invited to join us to learn how these Evergreen users have made open source work for their libraries.

Evergreen 3.1.2 and 3.0.8 released

The Evergreen community is pleased to announce two maintenance releases of Evergreen, 3.1.2 and 3.0.8.

Coming on the heels of the conference hackfest and a very successful Bug Squashing Week, both maintenance releases contain a large number of bug fixes to the web staff client and other Evergreen functionality.

Both maintenance releases contain the following improvements:

Cataloging

  • The MARC editor now handles 008 fields better.
  • Adds spaces between subfields when suggesting a call number for a new volume.
  • MarcXML exports from the MARC Batch Import/Export ? Export Records screen now downloads the file, rather than opening it in the browser.
  • The Item Status Circulation Library column now displays a shortname rather than the full library name.
  • The Item Status Remaining Renewals column now displays correctly.
  • The Item Status now has a “Last Renewal Workstation” column available.
  • Fixes the circulation counts displayed in Item Status Details.
  • Fixes an issue where multiple copies with different values for required statistical categories could not be edited and saved in batch.
  • Adds an option to remove floating in the copy editor.
  • Fixes an issue with the floating dropdown in the copy editor.
  • Fixes a problem in which the copy template didn’t properly copy certain objects.
  • Reduces the number of API calls that the MARC Editor requires.

Circulation

  • Fixes an issue that prevented the offline patron registration screen from loading.
  • Fixes an issue with searching patrons by permission group.
  • The barcodes in the patron search are now clickable.
  • Staff members can now manually override the patron juvenile flag value, regardless of the patron’s date of birth.
  • Checkboxes on patron registration screen are now properly aligned with other fields.
  • The user permission group dropdowns in the patron registration, edit, and search interfaces now have scrollbars.
  • The date picker on the checkout screen is now hidden unless circ staff activates a specific due date option.
  • The check-in screen now includes a copy status column.
  • The Merge Patrons interface now displays the date of birth.
  • The user bucket screen now displays the Bucket ID.
  • The payment button on patron bills screen is now inactive if the Payment Received field is blank.
  • The Bill History receipt now includes a Finish date and a Last Payment date.
  • When a patron summary contains an image of the patron, that image tag now has a null alt attribute to remove it from the flow of a screen reader.
  • Corrects an issue that caused the transit dialog to show the wrong branch.
  • Corrects an issue with printing transit lists.
  • “Find another target” on transiting hold no longer leaves the copy “in-transit”.
  • The images now display to distinguish hold and transit slips.
  • The Clearable Holds list printout now only shows holds that have expired.
  • Restores the call number prefix and suffix fields to the holds pull list.
  • The documentation at the top of the hold shelf slip template adds patron.alias.
  • The cursor in the in-house use screen now automatically goes to the barcode field.
  • The in-house use screen now shows a copy status column.
  • Adds support for converting change to patron credit in the patron bills interface, consistent with the XUL feature.
  • Fixes a bug that caused pickup/request library fields to be blank sometimes.
  • Fixes a bug in the offline org unit tree.

Command-line system administration

  • The novelist entry in eg_vhost.conf includes two new parameters.
  • Corrects an issue with the –max-sleep argument on the action_trigger_runner.pl support script.
  • Corrects an issue with how the eg_pbx_allocator.pl script detects an existing lock file.
  • The 3.0.2-3.0.3 upgrade script disables triggers before recalculating bib visibility.

Public catalog

  • Fixes an issue that caused records with located URIs to be retrieved in Copy Location and Copy Location Group searches.
  • Fixes an error message that appeared in the search box in the public catalog while placing hold after an advanced search.
  • Restores the display of copy information for the user’s preferred library in the public catalog.
  • Fixes regression errors in the search results page.
  • Removes redundant call numbers from the Show More Details search results.
  • The cast field in the catalog is now taken from the 511 field when first indicator = 1, rather than the 508.
  • Fixes a display issue caused by editing holds.

Serials

  • Fixes an issue that prevented users from searching for receivable issues using Database ID or ISSN in the Serials Batch Receive interface.

General

  • Adds some padding to the bottom of Web Client interfaces.
  • Logins now honor all org unit timeout settings.
  • Evergreen will now identify and handle invalid timezones.
  • Fixes an issue where a column header in some interfaces were automatically highlighted in green when retrieving the interface.
  • The parts column in the Item Status screen now displays parts data.

Additionally, the following improvements were added to the 3.1.2 maintenance release:

  • Removes an error that got thrown in the Holdings View when a call number contains no copy.
  • The order of the Z39.50 servers on the Z39.50 import screen no longer relies on capitalization.
  • Author and contributor names are no longer highlighted in search results when the user has turned off highlighting.
  • Repairs broken author search links on the catalog record page.
  • Pins AngularJS support to version 1.6, which prevents unsupported AngularJS versions (such as 1.7) from breaking the build process.

Please visit the Evergreen downloads page to download the upgraded software and to read full release notes. Many thanks to all of the Evergreen community members who submitted bug reports, contributed code, tested bug fixes, and wrote documentation for these two maintenance releases!