Just a quick post to announce PINES has grown by another library system: Lake Blackshear Regional. The PINES consortium has now grown to 49 library systems comprised of over 275 physical locations. The database has also grown: PINES is up to 9.3 million items and 1.8 million active users. PINES had over 17 million circulations last year.
Indiana Open Source ILS Initiative
The Indiana State Library and the Hussey Mayfield Memorial Public Library (Zionsville) have announced the Indiana Open Source ILS Initiative. They are embarking on a statewide project to implement Evergreen in a fashion similar to the Georgia PINES consortium.
More information can be found in the announcement. Congratulations, and welcome to the community!
The Michigan Evergreen Project
MLC is excited to be a part of the Evergreen community!
The Michigan Library Consortium (MLC) is a non-profit membership organization comprised of nearly 600 Michigan libraries of all types. MLC provides libraries a single point of contact for training, group purchasing and technical support for OCLC Products, electronic resources and more.
MLC and the Grand Rapids Public Library (GRPL) are currently working together to develop and launch the Michigan Evergreen Project, a shared library system using the open source ILS, Evergreen. MLC and GRPL will implement and maintain the shared ILS using a cost-sharing model. Libraries participating in the Michigan Evergreen project will pool resources to share in the costs of operating and maintaining the system, which will be wholly owned by the libraries in the collaborative.
Initially, MLC set out to find an affordable ILS system compatible with the Michigan eLibrary’s catalog, MelCat. Many Michigan libraries were using ILS systems that were homegrown or no longer supported by their Vendor. After researching several commercial and open source ILS systems, and discovering a great deal of interest in Evergreen among Michigan libraries, we decided to launch the Michigan Evergreen Project.
The project will begin in 2008 with a pilot group of five or more libraries. The initial pilot group will migrate to the shared system in two phases, with the first phase going live by July 2008 and the second phase going live later in 2008. In 2009 and future years, MLC plans to add libraries to the shared system annually.
We’re open to all input and questions, so please feel free to contact us!
Evette Atkin
Systems Librarian, Michigan Evergreen Project