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Evergreen Newsletter, June 2009

The newsletter for Evergreen open source library software

Volume 2, Issue 6 — June, 2009

As a reminder, we will also post this newsletter to the Evergreen general discussion list. Cross-posting and forwarding is encouraged.

In This Issue…

Evergreen Out and About (including Evergreen at ALA Annual 2009), MFHD Webinar, Evergreen Conference Recap, MLA Honors Ruth Dukelow, Evergreen Development Update, Evergreen Jobs, Evergreen Hires, Lyrasis Evergreen Classes, Planet Evergreen, New Evergreen Libraries, Newsletter Administrivia

Out and About: An Evergreen Calendar

Also see: http://evergreen-ils.org/calendar

If you have Evergreen-related events to add (talks, conferences, etc.), just email events@evergreen-ils.org.

ALA Annual 2009American Library Association Annual Conference (Chicago, Illinois, July 9-15). Evergreen folks from all over will be exhibiting, presenting, meeting with people, and so forth!

Some highlights:

  • Equinox Software will be at the ALA exhibits at Booth # 4051 [note, this is a correction]. If you’d like to schedule an appointment for a one-on-one conversation about Evergreen, email events@esilibrary.com. Shae Tetterton will be demoing Evergreen a few times, and there might even be another slot for “Open Source Jeopardy.”
  • Equinox Software is also hosting an Evergreen social function on Sunday, July 12, 5:30-7:30 at the Wine Cellar Room of the Chicago Firehouse Restaurant, 1401 S. Michigan Avenue. Please RSVP to events@esilibrary.com if you think you might show up so we have a good head count.
  • In Chicago, at (but not part of) the ALA Annual 2009 Conference, there will be an open source unconference on Saturday, July 11, 9:30am-12:15pm. “This event is being put on by King County Library System and The Galecia Group who have been working together on some OS projects for the last year and a half. Our enthusiasm for Open Source Library System software continues to grow and we recognize that it is one of those “the more the merrier” kinds of situations. We want to hear what others are doing, tell people what we’re doing, and get more people involved.” Interested? Request an oss4pl2009 wiki account
  • Also try to catch this program (Catherine Lemmer of Evergreen Indiana will be a panelist): Saturday, July 11, 1:30 – 3:00: What Can $930 Million Do for Library Services Nationwide? The Impact and Future Directions of LSTA. Sponsored by ASCLA SLAS. How do states use their LSTA dollars to improve library services? In an IMLS study, Himmel and Wilson examined all of the states’ five year evaluations, and reported on the observed major trends. A panel of speakers will present new directions of states’ projects.

WilsWorld (Madison, Wisconsin, July 28-29). Karen Schneider to do a plenary session and a couple other spots. Karen spoke at one of the earliest WilsWorld conferences and is excited to return!

Webinar: Evergreen ILS and MARC Format for Holdings Data (MFHD)

By popular demand — if you didn’t see this program at Evergreen International Conference, or you did but you’d like to see it again, here’s a live version to attend!

Presenter: David J. Fiander, Web Services Librarian, University of Western Ontario
Tuesday, July 21, 2009, 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. ET
Reserve your Webinar seat now

This talk will provide some real-world examples of serial publication patterns that can be challenging to interpret, show how those patterns can be described using the MARC Format for Holdings Data, describe how most integrated library systems currently implement MFHD, and discuss the challenges faced in implementing MFHD for Evergreen open source library automation software.

Recap: Evergreen International Conference, May 20-22, 2009

Program slidesets and videos are on the Conference wiki. To date videos have been uploaded for the opening remarks and opening and closing keynotes.

These blog posts, tweets, and pictures also wrapped up events:

http://www.librarian.net/tag/eg09/
http://hashtags.org/tag/eg09
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/eg09/
http://evergreen-ils.org/?p=206

And the Documentation Interest Group was formed, and since then has developed a 90-day timeline with tasks, deliverables, and a lot of volunteers!

Ruth Dukelow Honored by Michigan Library Association

The Michigan Library Association 2009 Librarian of the Year is Ruth Dukelow, of the Michigan Library Consortium. MLA noted, “Ruth has been involved in many statewide projects.” Indeed, like Michigan Evergreen! Read more about Ruth’s successes on MLA’s Professional Awards page

Evergreen Development Update

Evergreen 1.6 is imminent, and it has some terrific features. Some of the highlights include shelving locations displayed in the copy summary; a new events and notifications framework; a toggle-able button bar in the staff client for common search functions; “fast item add” in the MARC editor; billing enhancements; a tool for exposing additional MARC elements in the OPAC record display; initial MARC Format for Holdings Data (MFHD) functionality; and much more.

Plus, Release 1.6 exposes the acquisitions functionality completed to date in the Admin menu, so you can explore, review, discuss, and provide feedback!

Also see the Evergreen Roadmap for a full list of enhancements in 1.6 and for a top-level view of what’s coming in 2.0.

Evergreen Jobs!

See this posting about several job openings for Evergreen-related work—all new positions! Have a listing? Share it with the newsletter or post it to the Evergreen list!

Evergreen People!

Equinox Software Inc., “The Evergreen Experts,” recently hired Steve Callender as a Technical Support Specialist and Grace Dunbar as a Project Manager. These are both new positions within Equinox. Steve is originally from Anaheim and has 8 years of experience in technical support and development. Grace has considerable library experience, most recently as the head librarian for Savannah College of Art and Design.

Lyrasis Rolls Out More Evergreen Training Classes

Evergreen classes are offered online by Lyrasis (nee Solinet) on the following dates and times:

6/30/2009 10a.m.-11 a.m. Lyrasis Evergreen Guided Tour. FREE!

Since October, Lyrasis (created from a merger of SOLINET and PALINET) has taught close to 25 Evergreen classes, with over 100 students! Lyrasis is dedicated to training and instructing Evergreen, and they welcome your comments and suggestions for courses. All of their current course offerings are continuously updated, and Lyrasis plans to add more courses in the future. For comments or questions, contact Lyrasis instructors Jennifer.Bielewski@lyrasis.org or Jenny.Liberatore@lyrasis.org

Planet Evergreen

Can’t get enough news about Evergreen open source software? Subscribe to or read Planet Evergreen, an aggregator for Evergreen-related posts, at http://planet.evergreen-ils.org . Have a blog that talks about Evergreen? To add your blog to the Planet Evergreen blog aggregator, send email to Dan Scott

Evergreen on Facebook

Evergreen has a growing Facebook group. We are post events to this group, well as press releases for new Evergreen libraries and systems and other related news. The group now has close to 300 members. If you’re on Facebook, join our group. If you aren’t on Facebook and you don’t think you’re the Facebook “type,” give it a try. You might be surprised by who’s on Facebook!

A Few Reminders

Webinars and videos: Don’t forget the section on the Evergreen wiki devoted to community-contributed documentation and tutorials.

Evergreen also has a Flickr set

New Evergreen Libraries: Welcome Aboard!

Also see the growing list of Evergreen libraries

Natural Resources Canada

  • Calgary
  • Edmonton
  • Fredericton
  • Ottawa
  • Quebec
  • Sault Ste. Marie
  • Varennes
  • Vancouver
  • Victoria

SITKA (British Columbia)

Their first multibranch site, Lillooet Area Library Association, went live on May 26. It includes the Lillooet, Gold Bridge, Bridge River and a Book Bus.

Project Conifer

  • Algoma University
  • Laurentian University
  • Northern Ontario School of Medicine
  • University of Windsor
  • And others

Michigan Evergreen:

Oscoda Public Library

Evergreen Indiana:

Huntington Public Library

South Carolina LENDS:

South Carolina State Library
Beaufort County Library
Union County Public Library
Columbia Bible College

If you’d like to follow along as libraries join the Evergreen community, you can subscribe to the Equinox press release feed, which will announce most known Evergreen implementations (or follow the Facebook group mentioned above).

Newsletter Administrivia

Feel free to forward, share, etc.!

We try to get this out by mid-month (it’s still June, isn’t it?).

The co-wranglers for this newsletter are Karen Schneider, Equinox Community Librarian and John Fink, Digital Technologies Development Librarian at McMaster University.

Welcome Laura!

Back in December, Laura McFarland joined Equinox Software as a full time software developer for all things Evergreen. Though her primary focus is user interface design and development, which she is also studying as part of her computer science program, she is pretty much up for anything when it comes to writing code.

For those of you who have not met Laura in person or on IRC, you can learn a little bit about her from her welcome interview on the Equinox blog. In the interview, we learn, among other things, that she has a chihuahua named Linux and that she alternates her time between knitting and beating people up (OK, I’m paraphrasing). Seriously, though, we have been quick to challenge her, but not to cross her 🙂

Over the past 6 months, as one of the lead developers, I’ve had the pleasure of being one of Laura’s Evergreen mentors, working with her on a number of Evergreen user interface projects, and committing the majority of her 65+ patches. She dove into Dojo and has, by all accounts, survived unscathed. She has navigated a wide array of Evergreen web interfaces, patching as she went. And she is currently directing her attention to the XUL markup language and staff client development.

It seems fitting that we should celebrate Laura’s 6 month anniversary at Equinox by announcing her acceptance of the core Evergreen team’s offer to become a committer to the Evergreen project. As with all Evergreen developers, she will not work alone. She is part of the growing family of Evergreen developers, users, and advocates — like you!

Laura at EG09

Evergreen Documentation Interest Group: Can you DIG it?

This is a summary that was posted to the three Evergreen discussion lists (general, documentation, and development) about the exciting momentum gathering around Evergreen documentation.

The key take-away: the Evergreen community now has a Documentation Interest Group!  There will be an online meeting 3 p.m. Eastern Time Wednesday, June 10, to discuss initial roles and tasks — if you’re interested, sign up.

Most day-to-day discussions about the Evergreen documentation project will take place on the Evergreen documentation list (though news of note may be posted to this blog and other lists on occasion). To subscribe to open-ils-documentation (or other Evergreen lists), see http://evergreen-ils.org/listserv.php

More about the DIG Project
On Wednesday, May 20, 2009, at the Evergreen International Conference, close to two dozen members of the Evergreen community participated in a documentation planning discussion.

Following a presentation about documentation (see notes below), the group took the following actions and (unanimously) made the following commitments:

* Established an Evergreen Documentation Interest Group, aka DIG, or even, the DIGgers
* Agreed to meet regularly to plan and implement the Evergreen documentation project
* Agreed that core Evergreen documentation should be based on one single-source, standards-based, open format
* Agreed that DocBook was the format of choice for Evergreen documentation
* Agreed that community members could contribute documentation in any format, and the DIG would convert to DocBook format as required
* Agreed that the initial organizing meetings should clarify roles and tasks
* Agreed that Karen Schneider and Paul Weiss would lead this project at this point in time

Some of the earliest activities for the DIG will include establishing a timeline and a regular meeting schedule, and identifying initial tasks for project participants and recruiting for each role. Some of the preliminary groundwork for the project, once volunteers have committed to specific areas, will include identifying a core DocBook subset of tags for Evergreen documentation, writing an Evergreen style (markup) guide, developing heavily-annotated model templates, and providing toolset advice.

Documentation News of Note

The evergreen-ils.org website has been updated so that the Documentation list stands on its own, rather than being listed under Development. (See http://evergreen-ils.org/listserv.php )

Slides from the May 20 discussion are also on Slideshare. These slides spell out in greater detail why (and how) the Evergreen community is moving in this direction.  Questions? Post away!

http://www.slideshare.net/evergreenils/evergreen-docs-planning-session-2009 (full set)

http://www.slideshare.net/evergreenils/evergreen-documentation-lightning-talk (short set)