And two more things from Dan Scott of Conifer (though we didn’t know about this before we went to press with the newsletter): he’s giving a keynote at NELINET’s conference on October 9th with the title “Developing a crush on Evergreen” about Conifer and the state of Evergreen, and will also be giving a talk about Evergreen at the Free Software and Open Source Symposium 2009.
Evergreen International Conference 2009: Standing Together
A holiday weekend immediately followed “eg09,” as we tagged it, so it will be next week most likely before we see all the slides, pictures, blog posts, and whatnot associated with Evergreen International Conference 2009.
In some ways the Evergreen conference felt like a joyous family gathering, the kind where you connect with relatives you have only heard about through family folklore. For the first time ever, that which is “Evergreen” was in one place at one time, sharing common goals and interests. This will happen again many more times, but it will never happen again for the very first time.
It was a terrific event by all accounts, with a remarkable level of energy and excitement that began building in Wednesday’s “anyfests” for coding, sysadmin training, and documentation planning, then moved smoothly into a terrific opening-night reception.
On Thursday, Lamar Veatch, state librarian for Georgia, set the tone for the conference by beginning his opening remarks with the international recording of Stand By Me. (Sounds as if Evergreen now has a theme song?) Joe Lucia then gave an amazing opening keynote address, “Song of the Open Road.” We then all moved into a day and a half of bogglingly wonderful programs, table talks, Birds of a Feather sessions, keynotes, dine-arounds, pub crawls, and more.
On Friday we closed out our conference with a development update, three lightning talks, the last programs, and Jessamyn West’s closing keynote. Then we adjourned.. and it was all over, for the very first time!
William Jessup University: a self-implemented Evergreen site
William Jessup University, in California’s Sierra Foothills, is one of a number of sites that install and maintain their own Evergreen implementations. They went live in January 2009, at the beginning of their spring semester.
It’s often said that you don’t have to go it alone with Evergreen — there are commercial support options — but another way to express this is that you CAN go it alone with Evergreen. The software is free to download, free to use, free to modify — and your data also remains free, rather than sequestered in some vendor’s system or “cloud.”
Kevin Pischke, Jessup’s library director, added some thoughts about Evergreen. “We were in need of a new ILS from the standpoint that our old ILS no longer met our needs as a growing academic library. We looked into various proprietary and open source options for a replacement. Ultimately, we choose Evergreen because it is a well-supported open source project with a growing focus on the needs of academic libraries.”
Going it alone with open source software requires good resources — and of course, good software. Library director Kevin Pischke said, “we could never have done it without our IT staff [particularly Jeff Green] and of course the quality of the Evergreen project. W
e are a small library with a solid IT staff to rely on for support; however, as a library director I had the peace of mind that I could always contract with Equinox if we need further professional support.”
Kevin shared some last thoughts about what they hope to get out of Evergreen International Conference. “I am hoping to connect with and learn from others using Evergreen,” said Jeff. “We have been doing so much on our own that to spend time with others in the same boat should be refreshing and exciting.”
(Editorial note: the Evergreen community needs a better name for these implementations than “self-implemented site!” Ideas?)