The Evergreen Outreach Committee is pleased to announce that May’s Community Spotlight is Tiffany Little, of Georgia Public Library Service (GPLS). Tiffany is the PINES Services Specialist for Acquisitions, and in that role has become very involved with the larger Evergreen community.
Tiffany’s first experiences with Evergreen were while she was working as a PINES librarian. Her background is primarily cataloging but her experience also covered circulation, administration, and tech: “Pretty much everything except children’s services!” Tiffany notes. “Because I had such a broad range of experience, I like to see everything in the community.”
Tiffany’s community involvement began in 2017 when she was hired by PINES to facilitate broader use of Acquisitions in the consortium. She almost immediately was asked to join the Evergreen Community Development Initiative (then MassLNC) Development Committee as a workflow specialist.
In the years since, Tiffany’s community involvement has grown significantly. She revived the community Acquisitions Interest Group, and currently serves as its coordinator. She also was on the Conference Committee for the 2020 Evergreen International Conference and is a current member of The Evergreen Project Board.
In addition, Tiffany is a regular participant in community Bug Squashing Weeks, and is a member of the Bug Wranglers Team. Tiffany has commented on 443 bugs in Launchpad, as well as filed 49 bugs, and has contributed two patches to the Evergreen codebase.
Tiffany’s coding knowledge is primarily self taught, and she describes a path that is accessible to many who may not think of themselves as coders. Back in her library days, she began creating formulas for spreadsheets – and then when formulas got too complicated, she taught herself VBA to automate even more spreadsheet functions. “VBA taught me the idea of what coding is – input, do a thing in a certain order, output,” Tiffany says. “So when I wanted to do a patch, I did a similar thing – I looked in the file until I found something that looked like it was what I wanted, and tinkered until it worked.”
Tiffany’s advice to new community members is to lurk, especially if you’re intimidated at first. “When you start to lurk in the listserv and IRC, you realize that it’s just a roomful of people – and not that many people – and they become less intimidating.” As you get to know community members, she says, you learn to associate IRC handles with real people and build those relationships – however, make sure you are making connections: “Don’t lurk forever!”
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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 Andrea Buntz Neiman via abneiman@equinoxinitiative.org or abneiman in IRC.