Evergreen impressions

[Jon Forest]

Hi,
I'm the admin for statewide III systems in Maine. I stumbled across
this group since we are having a lot of the same discussions here
about open source ILS alternatives. We just had a visit from Brandon
Uhlman, admin for the BC Pines project. He mentioned that CO is in a
similar situation (see below) & there might be someone with some
experience working with the NCIP standard. I emailed Steve Wrede,
since I think that's the first name he mentioned, but if that's not
the right person to contact, I hope someone can point me in the right
direction. I posted this message to a local listserv, but I thought
folks here might be interested as well. Happy new year.

Jon Forest
Library Automation Manager
Maine InfoNet
http://www.maine.gov/infonet
jon.f...@maine.gov
207-557-0072


-----Original Message-----
From: Maine Libraries Discussion List [mailto:MELIBS-
L...@LISTS.MAINE.EDU] On Behalf Of Forest, Jon
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2007 10:38 AM
To: MELI...@LISTS.MAINE.EDU
Subject: [MELIBS-L] Follow up to Open Source ILS meeting

Hi all,
I wanted to share some of my thoughts after our visit last Friday from
Brandon Uhlman (Brandon...@gov.bc.ca) of the BC Pines project. He
answered a lot of questions and gave an in depth demo of Evergreen,
the
open source ILS developed by the Georgia Public Library Service. Here
are some of the notable points about Evergreen:

- Acquisitions & Serials functions do not exist yet. Laurentian
University is slated to go live with Evergreen in August, and ACQ will
be ready by then. Not sure about Serials.
- Interface for statistical reports is pretty clunky. Or maybe they
are
just more complex than I am used to with III. Brandon admitted that
he
has not worked with that function much, so maybe we just needed
someone
who could explain it better.
- There is a function called "buckets" which is similar to Create
Lists
in Millennium, which is vastly more developed. In Evergreen, you
basically have to add records individually by barcode or by searching
to
the catalog. There is no way to do the complex Boolean searches on
any
field in the record like you can in Millennium.
- There is some organization which certifies whether open source
software is ready for enterprise or not. (Sorry I can't recall the
name, but I can check.) Evergreen was not certified, but mainly just
because the documentation is lacking. They are working on it.
- Administration of branches, shelving locations, what is requestable
or
not, etc. is ridiculously easy, especially compared to III where this
is
ridiculously complex.
- Staff Permissions are pretty straightforward & easy to manage in
hierarchical groups.
- Staff client interface of the catalog looks exactly like the OPAC,
but
with more info visible in the top part of the window. Nice.
- The cataloger's interface looks pretty simple & straightforward (to
me, a non-cataloger). Full MARC record at the bottom, many fixed
length
fields at the top (like III). Templates are supported.
- Printing of holds lists and checkout receipts are very simple. Very
easy to edit what is included on the receipts. It does not print
spine
labels yet.
- There is currently no way to automatically clear expired holds from
the holdshelf, but that's under development.
- Email notifications are built in, but it does not yet do courtesy
notices. A telephone renewal & notification system is also under
development & will build on top of the SIP2 self checkout interface.
- The split between Georgia Public Library Service and the four chief
developers of Evergreen, who left to form their own company, Equinox
(http://www.esilibrary.com), to support it & continue development
work,
was completely amicable.
- In addition to the public libraries of Georgia (250+ branches,
migrated from a single SirsiDynix Unicorn system all at once) &
British
Columbia (2 so far, adding one a month), there is only one other
library
using Evergreen, a small school district in Carson City, MI.
- Over & over, when we asked about some specific feature or interface
improvement, the answer was something like, "not yet, but there's
nothing to stop you from developing it in house or contracting Equinox
to develop it. The Evergreen community would welcome any and all
improvements."
- In general, I was very impressed with the openness of the product.
While my own experience with Linux is limited, and I have never done
any
programming, this system looks like it would be much, much easier to
support than III in many ways. Everything here is built on open
standards, while everything about III is built on closed, proprietary
methods that only apply to their software. Basically, Evergreen is
based on plain text configuration files living on the Linux server,
and
while that's pretty much true of III too, we do not have access to
them
in III, only to certain aspects of them through the telnet
interface.


The big missing piece for us would be an interface between Evergreen
and
our III INN-Reach server, which connects the three state systems with
the seven other standalone III systems to form MaineCat. This would
allow us to ease the transition over time. Supposedly the Colorado
state library has a similar situation, and I've contacted them to
follow
up. Apparently the INN-Reach code is based on NCIP, which is an open
standard, and Evergreen does not support it yet, but it is on the
product roadmap.

If anyone has any questions, let me know. You can download a demo
version of the Evergreen staff client at http://open-ils.org. See the
GA Pines OPAC at http://gapines.org.