The Evergreen Outreach Committee is pleased to announce that June’s Community Spotlight is Benjamin Murphy, who works for the State Library of North Carolina as the NC Cardinal Program Manager. Benjamin joined NC Cardinal in 2017, having previously worked as a Systems Integration Librarian at the State Library of North Carolina’s Government and Heritage Library. He participated in their migration to Evergreen and attended the 2016 Raleigh Evergreen Conference.

Benjamin has focused many of his efforts at NC Cardinal on growing the consortium. “We’ve seen continual growth in my time here,” he says. “We’re now at 50% of public libraries in North Carolina, and continuing to grow.” NC Cardinal has worked for several years on major consolidation projects, like cleaning up circ mods, locations, and permissions.

While Benjamin is at the beginning of his broader community involvement, he has jumped in with both feet. Attendees at the 2020 Online Conference might have participated in one of the sessions hosted by NC Cardinal. Benjamin and his colleague April Durrence hosted several conference sessions, including the keynote. He particularly wanted to thank April and his other colleagues Courtney Brown and Llewellyn Marshall for their support and hard work.

In his role as a consortial leader, Benjamin has connected with other consortial leaders in the Evergreen community to share ideas. “It’s always good to have mentors, and it’s also good to mentor people. It’s helpful to brainstorm with other consortial leaders, share experiences, lessons learned, and counsel each other in terms of how to approach things.” When Benjamin was new in his position, he reached out to other consortial leaders for guidance, and now is in a position where he offers his guidance to newer community consortial leaders.

Benjamin touts the in-person conference as a great place to connect with members of the community, and put faces with names and/or IRC handles. He notes that it’s easy to be hesitant as a new community member, and that getting to know people via the conference has opened up avenues for learning and discussion.

“Imposter syndrome is real, [but] don’t let the things that you don’t know prevent you from making use of the knowledge of other people,” Benjamin says. “A lot of people in tech and libraries are introverts – so that doesn’t come naturally. When you put them in that context of shared similarity, it provides a way to engage and make connections, relationships,and friendships.”

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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.

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.