Evergreen ILS

Open Source Library Software

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Evergreen Community Spotlight: Christine Burns

The Evergreen Outreach Committee is starting the new year with some new branding – going forward, the Contributor of the Month feature will be known as the Community Spotlight. The intent of featuring our excellent community members remains the same. With that said, we are pleased to announce that January’s Community Spotlight goes to Christine Burns of BC Libraries Cooperative (BC Coop). Christine is a Trainer and Helpdesk Specialist for BC Coop.

Christine has been involved with the Evergreen community since 2015, when she attended her first Documentation Interest Group (DIG) meeting at the Hood River, Oregon Evergreen Conference. At the same conference, she presented on the Overdrive API Integration work that Sitka developed. She also facilitated that year’s Acquisition Interest Group Meeting. Christine definitely hit the ground running with community work!

As part of her job at BC Coop, Christine works with libraries who are joining the Sitka Consortium. “Training new libraries gives me an opportunity to see Evergreen through fresh eyes and have a better understanding of library processes,” Christine says. The Sitka Consortium includes many different kinds of libraries, among them Public, Government, Post-Secondary, and Special libraries.

Christine trains libraries in all areas of Evergreen and is therefore able to participate with a variety of community groups. Christine has worked with DIG and has contributed documentation to the community repository. She also works with the Acquisitions Working Group and the more recently formed Student Success Working Group. 

In 2019, Christine partnered with fellow Student Success Working Group member Jane Sandberg to test Jane’s development of an overhauled Booking Module. “The Booking Module had not had much development since 2011,” Christine notes. “Hopefully this project will encourage more people to use the Booking module, and this will allow for future Booking improvements.” The Booking work was released in the fall of 2019 as part of 3.4.

Over the years Christine has also contributed a lot to Evergreen bug squashing. She has filed 67 bugs in Launchpad and commented on 112 bugs, in addition to participating in several of the community Bug Squashing Weeks. In keeping with her broad perspective as a trainer, Christine’s bug reports touch all areas of Evergreen including Acquisitions, Circulation, Cataloging, Serials, and the OPAC.

Christine encourages new community members to get involved by joining a DIG and/or working group meeting, participating in Bug Squashing Week, or by attending the Evergreen Conference (this year’s conference is being hosted by GPLS in Atlanta, Georgia).

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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.

First Evergreen Releases of 2020

The Evergreen Community is celebrating the new year with two new releases: Evergreen 3.4.2 and Evergreen 3.3.6. These two releases look to the past to find and resolve troublesome, long-standing bugs. The releases also look to the future, including bug fixes for Evergreen’s new and emerging features, like the experimental staff catalog and carousel features. 24 individuals from 11 different organizations contributed to these releases.

Evergreen 3.4.2 includes fixes related to the Acquisitions, Administration, Cataloging, Circulation, and Hatch portions of Evergreen. Evergreen 3.3.6 includes fixes related to the Acquisitions, Cataloging, and Circulation portions of Evergreen. To learn more about the specific improvements in these releases, please refer to the 3.4.2 release notes, 3.3.6 release notes, or the consolidated tabular release notes.

The releases are available on the Evergreen downloads page.

Jeff Klapes: Evergreen Contributor of the Month

The Evergreen Outreach Committee is pleased to announce that December’s Contributor of the Month is Jeff Klapes, who is Head of Reference Services at Lucius Beebe Memorial Library, a part of the North of Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE) Consortium. Jeff is also the Chair of the Development Committee with the Evergreen Community Development Initiative, which is the successor to MassLNC.

Jeff emphasizes the importance of non-developers in the open source world. “I can’t code my way out of a paper bag with a map, but I don’t need to – I can be a cheerleader; I can make things come to fruition.” NOBLE has participated in the Evergreen community since before their go-live in 2012. Jeff cites NOBLE leadership as being very involved with real-world library issues, since they have all been front line librarians. 

In his role as a reference librarian, Jeff views his involvement with Evergreen through a lens of patron service and improving the end-user experience. “I love working with our patrons. When we can do things with the software that we couldn’t do before, I can tell them ‘That thing you hated? It’s fixed!’” 

Jeff told us a great story about patron-focused development. One of his patrons loves the Jessica Fletcher mysteries, and she reads them in Large Print. Jeff searched for all of the Large Print Jessica Fletcher mysteries in his consortium and, using the tools created in the Batch Actions From Search Results project, he put them in a basket for the patron. He placed suspended holds on all of the titles, and now activates one or two at a time – keeping his patron happily reading a steady stream of her favorite books in her preferred format.

Jeff echoes what many others have said about the positive value of ownership in an open source community. “We’ve spent too much of our professional lives waiting for wishlists that they haven’t made happen. THEY are US.” Jeff likes knowing that when his own staff have suggestions to improve Evergreen, they feel comfortable sharing those ideas because, “As often as not, it will eventually turn into something.”

The small size of the community and conference are its strengths, Jeff thinks, and he encourages new people to take advantage of that. “The community is small enough that you can get to know a lot of people,” he says. “I love the conference because it gives me an opportunity at least once a year to see people in person who I normally only interact with over the phone or email.”

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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.