Evergreen Community

The Evergreen Outreach Committee is pleased to announce that the Community Spotlight for the 4th quarter of 2021 is Irene Patrick. Irene is the Electronic Resources Librarian at the State Library of North Carolina. In that role she oversees electronic resources for the state and manages the Evergreen ILS for North Carolina’s Government and Heritage Library (GHL). 

Irene has extensive experience  in library automation and ILS management, beginning with the State Library’s implementation of Dynix in 1989. Her background in acquisitions and serials has informed many of her community interests. Irene is a regular presence at Evergreen Serials Interest Group meetings. While the Serials module sometimes doesn’t get the attention of other modules in Evergreen, Irene maintains her strong interest in Serials and is often advocating for Serials end users.

In 2017, Irene led the migration of GHL from a standalone Voyager system to the NC Cardinal Evergreen Consortium. The GHL is a research library, and NC Cardinal is a consortium of public libraries. This involved a lot of complicated work to get records and policies in place for the migration.

“We’re the proverbial square peg in the round hole,” Irene says. “But the migration was successful, and we have been pleased with the many enhancements that have come to Evergreen in the years since.”

She recommends that new community members join the listservs, and find an interest group to join. “Pick [an interest group] that matches your interests, and attend the meetings to learn about the modules and share problems you face,” she says.

Irene also participates with the Cataloging Interest Group, and often chimes in on listserv questions to help share her knowledge with the larger Evergreen community. Irene contributes to discussions that affect front line staff and their use of Evergreen, both on the listserv as well as in the community bug portal Launchpad.

Irene also recommends participating in the annual Evergreen conference. “I miss the in-person conferences, where you could get to know other members of the community,” she notes. “But the online conferences the past couple of years have still provided opportunities for learning and limited ways to meet people.” At the conferences, Irene likes to participate in community brainstorming sessions to share ideas for Evergreen improvements.

When she’s not working, Irene enjoys reading, gardening, and travelling to new places (though the latter has been curtailed the past couple years). She’s also a lifelong Star Trek fan and enjoys keeping up with the new streaming series.

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Do you know someone in the community who deserves a bit of extra recognition? Please use this form to submit your nominations. We ask for your email in case we have any questions, but all nominations will be kept confidential. Any questions can be directed to the Outreach Committee at evergreen-outreach@list.evergreen-ils.org.

Chris Burton of Niagara Falls Public Library (NFPL) made a splash last year when he wrote an entire Bootstrap-based version of Evergreen’s OPAC. Most new contributors start small, but the Bootstrap OPAC – nicknamed BOOPAC by the community – was not only Chris’s first contribution to Evergreen, it was the first rewrite of the OPAC in a decade.

Chris is the Technology Coordinator at NFPL, which is part of the Libraries in Niagara Consortium, and he is the Evergreen Outreach Community Spotlight for the second quarter of 2021. Chris has also served as a member of The Evergreen Project Board since 2019 and was elected as Board Vice-President for the 2021-2022 Board term.

Chris’s work on the BOOPAC grew out of a desire to make the OPAC more accessible for both mobile and assistive devices. The 2018 Evergreen Conference included the community brainstorming conversation Future of Evergreen, which started Chris thinking about how to improve the OPAC. Ontario’s strict accessibility guidelines via the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) also pushed Chris in the direction of thinking about accessibility.

There were more basic OPAC usability concerns, as well. “One of my first interactions was when a manager told me how hard it was to place a hold on her phone from the OPAC – ‘can you fix this?’ And then it spiraled from there,” Chris tells us. “I learned by fire.”

Chris’s background is in computer programming but he also does system administration work for NFPL, and he appreciates being able to dive into the code to change things if needed. “Knowing command line has saved me loads of time – looking for logs, knowing how to restart things, debug,” he states. “It’s so powerful but overlooked because it’s not pretty.” NFPL’s migration to Evergreen in 2017 was the first step in an ongoing process for NFPL of changing all of their proprietary products to open source products.

Chris encourages new community members to join the community IRC channel. “Don’t be afraid to ask questions – even if it is a stupid question; all the experts are on there pretty much all day,” he says. Chris also recommends looking at the community documentation as well as newer resources like the YouTube channel. “Having that stuff available is a gamechanger,” Chris says “When I started none of that was available.” 

He remarked how great it was to see a wide variety of community members attending the online conference. “It was amazing having Czechia there, to see how large the community is. Effortless collaboration,” he noted. 

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Do you know someone in the community who deserves a bit of extra recognition? Please use this form to submit your nominations. We ask for your email in case we have any questions, but all nominations will be kept confidential. Any questions can be directed to the Outreach Committee at evergreen-outreach@list.evergreen-ils.org.