by The Evergreen Outreach Committee is pleased to announce that April’s Contributor of the Month is Chauncey Montgomery. Chauncey serves as the Director and Fiscal Officer of the Sunbury Community Library in Ohio, which is part of COOL (Consortium of Ohio Libraries).
Chauncey was instrumental in forming COOL and encouraging Ohio libraries to adopt Evergreen. His interest in open source was initially spurred by cost concerns. He looked at using other open source software (GIMP, Libre Office) as well, but his ILS represented a large expense and that led him to consider Evergreen.
“It started as a financial decision, but as I got more into [Evergreen] the other benefits of open source became apparent,” Chauncey says. “Working in a public library, [open source] aligns so much with our views and philosophies. I feel like we have a responsibility to support open source initiatives.”
Chauncey has spoken to many libraries in Ohio about the benefits of open source and Evergreen. As a library director, he sees the patron services side as well as the library budget side which gives him an advantage when encouraging libraries to explore Evergreen.
“When people have troubleshooting questions, I really enjoy helping that way — it’s a nice overlap between library work and the Evergreen Community, and that’s really rewarding for me,” he says. He also encourages people to share what they’re learning with other libraries, both within Ohio as well as the larger Evergreen community.
Chauncey served on the Evergreen Oversight Board from 2013-2016 and is also a past chair of the COOL Oversight Board. He is currently vice chair of the COOL Board and slated to once again serve as chair next year. As chair, he would like to see COOL become more involved with Evergreen development. “Whether we are leading initiatives or supporting initiatives that we want to see happen, there is an opportunity there.”
Chauncey tells us, “I’m not a coder, but I’m a tinkerer — open source invites you to tinker. Open source lends itself to [a different] type of thinking — it does this, but can it also do this? Or can we change that? That, to me, is one of the most exciting things about open source. You can ask ‘What ELSE can it do?’”
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Any questions can be directed to Andrea Buntz Neiman via abneiman@equinoxinitiative.org or abneiman in IRC.