Community contributions are critical to the success and sustainability of the Evergreen project. Most of these contributions are expected to come from employees of Evergreen libraries, consortia and service providers, but other work responsibilities often take priority, leading to inconsistent work on the project. How can managers build a culture where open-source contributions are valued and encouraged? In this session, leaders from Bibliomation, Georgia PINES, and NOBLE will share their methods for encouraging staff to be active participants in the Evergreen community. Attendees are invited to bring their own tips and ideas for ensuring their organizations are actively working with the community.
Data, Data, Everywhere
Protecting the right to privacy and confidentiality in library use is a bedrock principle of the library profession. As the administrators of our libraries’ integrated library systems, we are the gatekeepers of the software that contain a great deal of personally identifiable information on our users. What our some policies and best practices we can implement to ensure that right to privacy is protected? In this workshop, we will look at steps libraries and consortia can take to conduct a privacy audit, specifically against our Evergreen system and catalog. This is a participatory workshop where attendees will review recommended privacy guidelines against the policies and practices used in their organizations. This session will also include the building of a wishlist of Evergreen enhancements that would better support the privacy of our users.
Burnout in Open Source Communities
Burnout is a common problem in open-source communities that can ultimately cause anxiety, fatigue and stress to the contributors that we rely on to support the software, documentation, and outreach efforts. When left unchecked, it can also lead to contributions being ignored, missed roadmap deadlines, dropped projects, and, at its worst, key contributors leaving the community. In this talk, we’ll look at open-source burnout, using real data from the Evergreen community; review how contributors can deal with their own burnout; and, more importantly, how libraries and vendors can encourage contributions and make other key decisions to help existing contributors.