BOSS: Bibliomation and Open Source Systems

A tale of two libraries

2011-11-21T09:16:00.000-08:00

Yee-haw! We're officially welcoming two libraries to the Bibliomation fold this month. Warren Public Library went live on November 7 and Bridgeport Public Library returned to Bibliomation on the 14th.

These two libraries couldn't be more different, and it was great fun to spend their go live days with them. Warren is a small town in Northwestern Connecticut and Bridgeport is Connecticut's largest city. This was the first ILS for Warren, where almost every patron knew it was the library's big day.

Bridgeport is returning to Bibliomation -the library was one of the founding members of our consortium and actually housed Biblio's headquarters in our early days. Like the majority of our libraries, they migrated from Horizon. Equinox handled their data migration and we're pleased as punch with the results.

This Thanksgiving, we're giving thanks that we have two fine libraries joining our ranks. Have a joyous and safe holiday, US Evergreeners.

Almost there!

2011-10-11T09:59:00.000-07:00

We're coming into the home stretch of our migration-filled two years. The Warren Public Library is automating for the first time and plans to go live on November 7th. Bridgeport Public Library will be re-joining Bibliomation with a go live date of November 14th.

Bridgeport has already rocked our Evergreen world. Our acquisition libraries were frustrated by a bug that limited purchase orders to 20 line items from a selection list. Bridgeport stepped in and funded the fix; this morning, a library created a purchase order with 38 items. We couldn't be more pleased and we're all looking forward to welcoming Bridgeport back into the Bibliomation fold.

Back to School!

2011-09-01T13:22:00.000-07:00

For most of Bibliomation's schools, the first day has been delayed thanks to Irene. However, our friends at Equinox software got their data transferred into our Evergreen servers before the storm hit. Bibs, items, and students are all ready to go for our school media specialists once they have electricity to access them.

We're still training (and rescheduling hurricane-disrupted trainings) and working out new routines and workflows with the schools, but their data is ready to go. Next up, Bridgeport Public Library!

-Kate

image by Flickr user strangelibrarian

It’s Official – Bibliomation is an (almost) all-Evergreen consortium

2011-07-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

On June 7, 2011, all of Bibliomation’s public libraries became Evergreen libraries. This fall, the school libraries will start their year with Evergreen and two more public libraries will join Bibliomation, bringing our total public library membership to 60.

We’ve been up and running on Evergreen for almost two months now and while it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing (what migration ever is), we’re finding our way and establishing some best practices as we go.

We’re over the moon about Ben Shum’s work automating our monthly reports and Jessica Venturo’s reports in the staff client. We’ve got data any which way our libraries want it. Now that we’re settling in to circulation and cataloging in Evergreen, Mary Llewellyn is forging ahead with acquisitions and serials. We’re bringing our libraries’ feedback about these two newest components of Evergreen as well as everything else in our new ILS back to the community and we’re building a wishlist for future development.

Bibliomation is excited to be a part of the Evergreen community and we can’t wait to build an even brighter future for our libraries and our ILS!

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered

2011-05-11T05:55:00.001-07:00

This is me, signing the official Evergreen Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement with the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), an umbrella, not-for-profit organization that helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects.

I was one of many interested individuals serving on the Evergreen Oversight Board, hoping to find a means to protect the assets of the Evergreen community and we found such a way with the SFC. We spent the past year developing a beginning rules of governance that were adopted at the 2011 Evergreen conference on April 29th. One of our first tasks, now that these rules have been accepted, is to define a mechanism for electing Board members in future years.

I am very pleased to be on this Board, as the individuals I serve with seem to inhabit the spirit of open source. It was stressed again and again throughout our process of defining who we are and what our role should be, that we did not want to add a layer of bureaucracy to a community that is already thriving, fulfilling key components to keeping Evergreen growing in a very productive manner. We have found our role in the Evergreen community and I am happy to report that it is a supportive role, one that will help the existing groups - the developers, the documentation interest group, and the rest - grow even more.

For more information see here.

--Amy Terlaga
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Here we go!

2011-05-08T19:39:00.001-07:00

Evergreen training starts tomorrow. My trusty little car is loaded up with documentation, handouts, and my picnic blanket. Don't worry, there's still room for donuts!

-kate

Welcome, Hagaman Memorial Library!

2011-04-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

We're pleased as punch to welcome East Haven's Hagaman Memorial Library to the Evergreen community!

The Hagaman Memorial Library went live on Monday, April 4 and was a roaring success.

The library staff used Evergreen's offline circulation mode over the weekend and reported it was easy to use. On Monday morning, they wisely opened late, so they could spend time in the morning checking in returns from over the weekend and acclimating to their new system. Their first Evergreen patrons were a preschool class storytime that got to come in while the library was closed.

I think I can safely declare Hagaman Memorial Library the most adorable go live ever!

The Evergreen Kids Catalog Project Picks Up Steam

2011-03-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

We're happy to report that the kids catalog development project for the Evergreen catalog is moving nicely along. Bibliomation, along with our development partners, The King County Library System (Washington state), Sitka (British Columbia), and PINES (Georgia Public Library Service), have just approved the basic graphical skins that FGI, a Seattle-based web design firm, has created.

Next steps: We'll be checking with Equinox to make sure that they can develop the functionality around these skins so that libraries could plug in any skin of their choosing.

Equinox is also preparing a quote for us so we'll know what it will cost to develop the functions and features we'd like to see in this catalog, including:

The option to filter to juvenile materials exclusively, either by MARC record (audience field) or by item shelving location code(s)
The option to add and delete new graphical subject categories or edit existing ones
The ability to see grade level information
The ability to add a bibliography of web links
The ability to add ratings and user reviews

For more information about this kids catalog project, you can contact me at terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org.

Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc.

It's our Paper Anniversary

2011-03-04T10:43:00.000-08:00

I'm a day late with this, but yesterday marked Bibliomation's first Evergreen anniversary! Beacon Falls Public Library was the first library in Connecticut to go live on Evergreen. They were also the first public library in Connecticut to move to an open source ILS.

What a year it's been! Since March 3, 2010, Bibliomation has brought up ten more Evergreen libraries, with another still cataloging away. We've been enjoying newlywed bliss with our new ILS and the Evergreen community, and we can't wait to introduce the rest of our libraries to our new sweetheart.

Image from Flickr user Eric Martin

Falls Village is LIVE

2011-02-28T13:15:00.000-08:00

The David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village went live on Evergreen 2.0 last week. The tireless staff at the library had been cataloging their collection since June 2010. They bravely made the leap to automation as we upgraded our Evergreen system to Evergreen 2.0. Their first Evergreen patron was an exciting moment!

It was a big week for D.M. Hunt Library - they got their first iPad on Friday, started using their first ILS on Tuesday, and had their big annual fundraiser on Saturday.

Welcome, David M. Hunt Library!

Bibliomation is UP on Evergreen 2.0!

2011-02-22T06:51:00.000-08:00

Bibliomation's development partner libraries were successfully moved over to Evergreen 2.0.1 over this past weekend. This move is the first stage in our many migrations to Evergreen this year.

Most of the development partner libraries (10 total) were brought up on Evergreen 1.6 last year. Late last year, we turned our attention to preparing for our multiple migrations to 2.0. We purchased the hardware necessary (multiple servers to create a stable, redundant environment) to support Bibliomation's 48 public libraries and 19 K-12 schools, plus the development partner libraries, and others. Now that the development partner libraries are on 2.0, we can really see how 2.0 performs and will be looking to these libraries to provide feedback.

At the end of March, we'll migrate The Hagaman Memorial Library, in East Haven over and they will join the ever-growing Evergreen network on Bibliomation's powerful servers.

Memorial Day weekend marks the migration of Bibliomation's public libraries off of Horizon and onto Evergreen, joining the development partners and East Haven. At this time, Evergreen's Acquisitions software will be put to the test.

Bridgeport Public Library and its branches will be folded in 4th of July weekend. Lastly, Bibliomation's schools will come up in September, closing out our very busy migration year.

Thanks to Ben Shum, Bibliomation's Open Source Software Coordinator, for configuring Bibliomation's servers for 2.0 and shepherding this upgrade through the long weekend. Bibliomation is using Alpha-G's John Craig and Backstage Library Works to assist us in these migrations as they involve multiple databases - the deduping, loading, and overlaying of these sets of bibliographic records have been critical to the success of the project.

Evergreen 2.0 is Out!

2011-01-30T14:37:00.000-08:00

The long awaited release of Evergreen 2.0 is now out and available for all to download, install, configure, and have fun with.

Evergreen 2.0 brings with an extensive list of features, including some major functions such as Acquisitions. To see the list of features, click here.

King County Library System, in Washington state, drove much of the Evergreen 2.0 development effort. King County went live on Evergreen last September. Other sites, like the PINES System in Georgia, contributed significantly to the Acquisitions development.

Bibliomation will bring our Development Partner libraries up on Evergreen 2.0 in mid-February.

Evergreen System Preview for our Libraries

2011-01-24T12:44:00.000-08:00

Kate Sheehan, Bibliomation's Open Source Implementation Coordinator, has been showing off the Evergreen system to our member libraries these past two weeks. Her demonstrations have been well received, as she has a talent for injecting a bit of humor into them. We're building momentum for our Memorial Day migration this May!

Many of our library partners brought their laptops with them to the demonstration; Kate walked them through the Evergreen client download and installation. These clients are now connected to our Evergreen test server so that staff can familiarize themselves with the software features such as how to search for a book, place a hold on an item, check that item out, etc.

Our libraries will be Evergreen experts in no time!

The Coding has been Completed!

2010-11-29T09:24:00.000-08:00

We have heard from Equinox - the coding for our K-12 schools/academics due date functionality has been completed!

The functionality centers around end-of-school year and hard due dates. One enhancement will allow schools to apply an end-of-year due date for their students' items. As the school year nears a close, no items will check out past this date. The other enhancement, the hard due date, will be used for faculty - they can check items out at any time during the school year and the items will be due at the end of the year.

For these two enhancements, Bibliomation had partnered with four library systems:

Conifer (Ontario, Canada)
Sage Library System (Oregon)
Kirtland Community College (Michigan)
MassLNC (Massachusetts)

This functionality will be added to the next releases of Evergreen and we will be able to test it for our 22 K-12 schools. The Lebanon Schools, already on Evergreen, will be able to use the enhancements for the end of their school year this June.

--Amy
==============
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Evergreen Software Development - News

2010-11-16T11:30:00.000-08:00

Bibliomation's Melissa Lefebvre and Ben Shum submitted an Evergreen software enhancement that was recently accepted by the Evergreen community. Their "New Search" button has been added to versions 1.6.1.3 and 2.0. This button opens up a new Advanced Search tab from within the Evergreen staff client. It is a very nice addition!

Many people ask, "Just who are the core software committers to Evergreen?" This list of software developers is constantly expanding, but to see who currently has commit privileges to Evergreen trunk, you can go to http://open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=contributing:contributors.

Bibliomation is very pleased to have our software enhancement make it into the latest releases of Evergreen!

--Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Douglas Library, North Canaan is now LIVE on Evergreen!

2010-10-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

The Douglas Library, in North Canaan, CT, is now live on BibliOak, Bibliomation's Development Partner Evergreen system.

The Douglas Library is the seventh CT library to be brought up on Evergreen. The other six libraries are The Beacon Falls Public Library, the Douglas Library of Hebron, The Jonathan Trumbull Library in Lebanon, the Lebanon Schools, the Windham Free Library, and the Sprague Library in Baltic.

Bibliomation has three more development partner libraries to go - the Slater Library in Griswold, the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village, and the Warren Public Library before we bring our development partner project to a successful close in early 2011.

If you have any questions about Bibliomation's development partner project, you can contact Melissa Lefebvre, Bibliomation's Open Source Project Manager, at mlefebvre{at}biblio{dot}org.

--Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc.
Middlebury, CT

Bibliomation Speaking Engagements

2010-09-17T07:03:00.001-07:00

We're spreading the good news about Evergreen!

Here are a couple of speaking engagements Bibliomation staff are involved in:

PaLA - Pennsylvania Library Association Conference
October 25th - "Evergreen Open Source Library Systems - Coast to Coast"
I'll be speaking along with Jed Moffitt of KCLS, Elizabeth McKinney of Georgia PINES, and Jim Corridan of Evergreen Indiana. The conference is in Lancaster, PA. I've never been to Lancaster before and I hear that it's lovely so I'm really looking forward to this trip.

More information on the conference program can be found here.

ALA 2011 - New Orleans
Melissa Lefebvre, Bibliomation's Open Source Project Manager, will be speaking with Jenny Turner of PALS (Minnesota) and Shae Tetterton, Project Manager for Equinox, Inc., about their Evergreen migration project experiences. The title of their program is "Project Manager's Jambalaya: 1 part MLS, 1 part open source, and a whole lot more!" This program is being sponsored by LITA.

Come check us out!

--Amy
==============
Amy Terlaga, Assistant Director, User Services
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Migration Preparations are Underway!

2010-09-13T11:28:00.001-07:00

Our Evergreen servers have arrived! There are 18 servers in total, with enough power and room to handle our member libraries, plus room for growth!

We're just now working out the details of our migration plan. Melissa Lefebvre, our Open Source Project Manager, is sketching out our time line as I write this. We plan to bring our libraries up on a version of Evergreen 2.0, the release that King County is coming up on later this month. We'll start with our ten development partners - we will move them over to the new servers sometime in early 2011. Then we'll bring in the East Haven Public Library. We hope to have them up on Evergreen in early March. Then we'll focus all of our energies on migrating our 48 public libraries off of Horizon and onto Evergreen by Memorial Day weekend. After that, we'll move the Bridgeport Public Library and its branches over later next summer. Lastly, we'll make sure that our 19 K-12 schools are up on Evergreen in time for the new school year, September 2011.

Whew! That should keep us busy for the next year!

--Amy
============
Amy Terlaga, Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc. / terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

School is in session!

2010-08-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Lebanon Schools are up and running with Evergreen. Lebanon Middle School and Lyman Memorial High School went live yesterday. The elementary school will be up with their new ILS on Monday.

Lebanon's move to Evergreen has been fantastic. The three librarians are engaged, supportive, and fun to work with. The libraries are popular spots for the students to spend time in. In short, the Lebanon school libraries are a vibrant new member of the Evergreen community.

The students know there's a new system and a few searched for books on the first day of school. Instruction begins in a week or two for the middle school students. Yesterday, the fifth graders had an introduction to the library and lined up enthusiastically to check out some fun reading material.

Lebanon Schools are Bibliomation's first Evergreen schools and we're off to a great start! The planned enhancements will only make next year even better - we can't wait!

KCLS provides a preview of their new Evergreen OPAC!

2010-08-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

King County Library System, in Washington state, goes live on Evergreen at the end of September. Check out this video overview of their new, whiz-bang Evergreen web catalog:

http://rscel.evergreen-ils.org/node/1480

Let the coding begin!

2010-08-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

It's now official - we have just signed off on the Equinox development quote for our Evergreen K-12 schools due date functionality.

This functionality will give all Evergreen academic and K-12 school libraries the ability to set end-of-semester due dates for their students. In addition it will provide the ability to set hard due dates for faculty.

ESI hopes to have development completed for us to test by the end of this calendar year. Bibliomation will have the Lebanon Schools live on Evergreen by the end of this month. If all goes well, the Lebanon Schools will be able to use this new functionality in June 2011.

Bibliomation has partnered with the following Evergreen sites on this development project:

Project Conifer (Ontario, Canada)
Sage Library System (Oregon)
Kirtland Community College (Michigan)
MassLNC (Massachusetts)

We'd like to publicly thank our development partners for their cooperation. We could not have moved forward with this project without them!

If you have any questions about this Evergreen development project, you can contact me at terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org.

--Amy
----------------
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, inc.

You came. You saw. You ate some ice cream

2010-08-11T13:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's ice cream social was a rousing success, thanks to the enthusiastic attendance of 65 librarians from 23 libraries. Next time, I'll make sure to get less ice cream and more hot fudge - you are people after my own heart with your epic hot fudge consumption!

Our timeline generated a lot of interest, so I'll post it here:

The production servers are arriving and getting set up between now and the end of September.

We'll be profiling libraries throughout the fall, which we'll do by taking what we have in Horizon and translating it into Evergreenese. We'll be sending out questionnaires to clarify as needed.

Once we've got everyone profiled, we'll start entering rules and settings. We'll keep at that until we're done (it's quite the process).

We'll have the early training (the sneak peek training) from January until March, but the real training will take place in late April.

Go Live is slated for Memorial Day weekend, 2011!

We'll keep all of our members posted on all things Evergreen - keep asking questions!

-Kate (ksheehan@biblio.org)

The Windham Free Library is now LIVE on Evergreen

2010-08-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

The Windham Free Library is the fifth library in Bibliomation's Development Partner project to go live on Evergreen. The library began circulating items on the BibliOak Evergreen system this morning!

Windham Free joins the Beacon Falls, Hebron, Lebanon, and Sprague libraries on BibliOak.

To view the Windham Free Library catalog, you can go to:

http://acorn.biblio.org/windham

I scream, you scream

2010-07-20T06:59:00.000-07:00

We all scream for Evergreen! Oh, and ice cream...

Bibliomation members are invited to an ice cream social at Middlebury Public Library. We'll hear from BibliOak members about their experiences with Evergreen and the open source team will demo some exciting Evergreen features.

When: August 10 10:00 a.m.
Where: Middlebury Public Library

We'll start with the Q+A with the development partners, then we'll have ice cream during the demo!

You supply your questions, we'll supply the hot fudge!

RSVP to Joan at jshamato@biblio.org

CC image from D Sharon Pruitt

Evergreen Enhancements for K-12 Schools, Academics

2010-07-09T07:24:00.001-07:00

Bibliomation is partnering with four other Evergreen sites to sponsor some enhancements that will benefit academic libraries and K-12 schools.

The enhancements will allow Evergreen libraries to apply hard due dates and end-of-semester dates against specific patron profile groups.

The four partners working with Bibliomation are:

Sage Library System (Eastern Oregon)
Kirtland Community College (Michigan)
MassLNC (Massachusetts)
Project Conifer (Ontario, Canada)

The enhancements will be developed by Equinox, Inc. A cost and time estimate should be provided to Bibliomation and its partners in the coming week.

For more information, you can contact me at terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org.

Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc.

And Then There Were Three ...

2010-05-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

The Jonathan Trumbull Library, in Lebanon, is now live on Bibliomation's Evergreen system. They came up on May 18th and are happily chugging along.

Jonathan Trumbull is the third development partner to be brought up on BibliOak. They join the Beacon Falls Public Library and the Douglas Library of Hebron.

To see their web catalog, click here.

To read the Equinox press release, click here.

Evergreen 2010 Conference: Acquisitions

2010-04-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

The following is a post from Mary Llewellyn, Bibliomation's Database Services Manager and Lead Cataloger. She summarizes her notes from the Evergreen Acquisitions Development update, "Evergreen Acquisitions Roundup," with Bill Erickson of Equinox.
----------------------------

The session that stands out for me was the Evergreen Acquisitions Roundup, presented by Bill Erickson of Equinox. I was very impressed with the direction the acquisitions module is taking. Many of the features our acq users currently have in Horizon are being developed in Evergreen, including the ability to upload order files from vendor resources such as Baker & Taylor’s Title Source or Ingram’s iPage. We’ll have the ability to define the tag and subfields that the information is coming from, so we won’t have to do much reconfiguring on the vendors’ sites for our libraries.

A feature that we don’t currently have that I think will be welcomed by our libraries is the ability to send EDI order files to the vendor from the Evergreen client itself. Currently the libraries using EDIFACT have to download the purchase order to their desktop, then send the file to the vendor using a third-party FTP client.

Another new feature is the ability of patrons to place requests for purchase that the library staff can review and either accept or reject. Patrons will be allowed to place title level holds on their own requests, and the system can send notifications to the patron about the status of the request.

Another feature that has me very excited touches on the cataloging module. They are developing the ability to have different MARC import profiles, and to designate certain tags to be kept when an imported record merges with/overlays an existing record.

The Acquisitions module will be included in Evergreen 2.0, which is coming out in “alpha” late summer 2010.

Growing Evergreen 2010 International Conference

2010-04-28T12:25:00.000-07:00

The Bibliomation team just got back from our first Evergreen conference in Grand Rapids, MI, and we are all very jazzed from it, very jazzed, indeed. As I said to my boss, our CEO, Mike Simonds, "This was the best conference I've ever attended." Sure, there was the usual stuff of conferences - the networking, the keynote speakers, the ice cream breaks .... But what really stood out as different was the overall sense of collective enthusiasm I experienced. Nobody (-okay, one person, but I'm not sure what she was doing there in the first place-) was down on the software. I heard no wet blanket, "Oh, why doesn't the system do this?" talk, something I've been listening to for YEARS now at every other ILS vendor conference I've attended over these past fourteen years as a professional librarian.

Taking Ownership
I've thought some on this and I think that the reason why this conference was so fantastically enjoyable was that everyone there seemed to get that we were all in this together. The "Us v. Them" mentality did not present itself during the three days that I participated in roundtable discussions, impromptu meetings, user programs, and casual conversations with my fellow attendees.

Also, I discovered that this open source ILS community is rife with some amazingly talented, inspired, passionate individuals, who seem to share the sensibility that united we stand so let's get together and put on a show. I saw no egos on display - everyone seemed REALLY cool. When I asked Mike Rylander of Equinox why he didn't seem to have an ego the size of Toledo, he laughed it off in that "Aw, shucks" way he and the rest of the Equinox crew have about them.

Get Involved
Librarians love to share. For many of us, that's why we got into the profession in the first place. I have never been prouder to be a librarian than I am right now. I love the fact that I can help shape this growing Evergreen community in meaningful ways. For instance, I have volunteered to serve on the Evergreen reports taskforce and the governing committee for the embryonic, but quickly evolving Evergreen Foundation. Both of these opportunities came out of this year's conference.

I cannot wait for Austin in 2011. I hope to see you there.
Jump in. The water is more than fine. It is outstanding!

--Amy
=================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Equinox Releases Canned Reports for EG 1.6.0

2010-04-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

Bibliomation is pleased to report that Equinox has made available a full set of canned reports for the Evergreen community. Bibliomation was one of three library partners who provided feedback to Equinox regarding these reports.

The reports are divided up into three main areas:

Library Collections
Library Patrons
Library Services

For more information about the specific reports, you can read more on the Equinox blog here.

We are all very thankful to the folks at Equinox for taking the time to develop this core list of reports. They will be greatly used!

--Amy

IMLS Grant Partners accept Bibliomation!

2010-04-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

Bibliomation has received the exciting news that we have been accepted as the fifth partner into the IMLS grant project headed up by King County Library System, "Empowered by Open Source."

The following is an excerpt from our acceptance letter from Jed Moffitt, Director of Information Technology Services at King County:

Thank you for your request for admission as a partner to our IMLS Grant Project “Empowered by Open Source”.

As per the goals outlined in the grant, we are looking for at least three new library partners per year toward the goal of developing a peer-to-peer support model for public library migration to open-source systems. We are looking to partner with libraries that have strong visions and have made clear strides toward an open-source future.

On behalf of our IMLS grant partners and our growing RSCEL community, we’d be pleased to accept Bibliomation as a grant partner.

We’re excited about the open-source strategy and progress underway at Bibliomation, and look forward to working with you.
--------------------------------

King County is still looking for two more library system partners in 2010. It could be you!

-Amy
====================
Amy Terlaga / terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc.

Evergreen Demos at CLA

2010-04-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Bibliomation will have a booth at this years Connecticut Library Association conference. Stop by to check out our new updated company logo, see how our BibliOak Project is going or just say “hi.”

We will also be demonstrating different aspects of Evergreen at our booth. The dates and times are below.

Monday, April 19

TIME	TOPIC
10:15am-10:30am	Staff Client – Searching
11:15am-11:30am	OPAC Bookbags and My Account
12:15pm-12:30pm	Staff Client – Patron Registration
2:15pm-2:30pm	Staff Client – Placing holds and pull list
3:45pm-4:00pm	OPAC Searching

Tuesday, April 20

TIME	TOPIC
10:15am-10:30am	Staff Client – Searching
11:15am-11:30am	OPAC Bookbags and My Account
12:15pm-12:30pm	Staff Client – Patron Registration
2:15pm-2:30pm	Staff Client – Placing holds and pull list
3:45pm-4:00pm	OPAC Searching

Bibliomation Requests to be IMLS Grant Partner

2010-04-05T12:02:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I submitted our letter of application to become the first library to participate in the first wave of King County Library System's IMLS open source library system (OSLS) grant partners. The grant calls for King County to add three libraries per year for the next three years to their grant project. King County's initial library partners are The Peninsula Library System (San Mateo, California), the Orange County Library System (Orlando, Florida), and the Ann Arbor District Library (Michigan). The grant was awarded to King County last September 2009.

The following is an excerpt from Bibliomation's letter of application:

[...]
On behalf of Bibliomation, I respectfully request that you consider our consortium as a first wave partner of additional IMLS grant partners for the year 2010.

Bibliomation is a committed and active member of the Evergreen community. Some of our projects include:

• The contracting out of Dan Scott of Project Conifer to develop Evergreen-specific SQL training course materials. Dan spent two days training eight Bibliomation staff members to write Evergreen SQL queries. Bibliomation has worked with Dan to make these course materials available to all interested Evergreen libraries under the Creative Commons license.

• The development of a collaborative-based Evergreen kids' catalog. Bibliomation was able to find three other Evergreen sites to help develop the project plan and functional specifications for this major addition to the Evergreen ILS.

Bibliomation has also brought up two small CT public libraries on our first Evergreen system. We plan to add at least six more public libraries and one school system before we migrate our entire consortium (48 public libraries, 23 K-12 schools) in the summer of 2011.

I believe that we will be a strong asset to your IMLS grant project.
[...]

-Amy
=================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc.
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

The Lebanon Schools join BibliOak

2010-03-29T12:11:00.000-07:00

The Lebanon Schools have just joined Bibliomation's development partners project. This K-12 school system joins the Jonathan Trumbull Library, in Lebanon, already a BibliOak partner, scheduled to go live May 18th. This bodes well for Lebanon students as they will be able to use the same ILS in both their public library and school library environment.

We are excited to have these three schools (elementary, middle, and high) join us since Bibliomation already has 23 K-12 schools as members and we need to test Evergreen functionality against specific school needs.

Bibliomation plans to bring up the Lebanon Schools at the start of their new school year this September.

--Amy
================
Amy Terlaga, Assistant Director, User Services / terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

The Douglas Library, North Canaan Joins BibliOak

2010-03-18T08:24:00.000-07:00

The Douglas Library in North Canaan, CT is the eighth public library to join Bibliomation's Development Partner Project. Douglas Library is very close to the David M. Hunt Library, in Falls Village, another development partner library that recently signed up. There will be great opportunities for reciprocal borrowing on the Evergreen system between these two libraries.

Erica Joncyk, the director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village, was instrumental in getting the Douglas Library to join. Erica wrote in her letter of intent to us:

"I look forward to working with you and your team and the excellent service that Bibliomation is known to provide."

Falls Village and Sprague Join BibliOak Project

2010-03-15T08:36:00.001-07:00

The David M. Hunt Library, in Falls Village, and the Sprague Public Library are the latest two Connecticut public libraries to join Bibliomation's Development Partners Project, BibliOak.

These libraries join the Beacon Falls Public Library (live March 3rd), the Douglas Library of Hebron (live March 8th), the Jonathan Trumbull Library (go live date - May 18th), the Slater Library of Griswold and the Windham Free Library (go live date - July 1st) as the sixth and seventh partners of this Evergreen pilot project.

Bibliomation staff will have plenty of experience running this consortial library system by the time we migrate our 48 public libraries and 23 k-12 schools sometime in 2011!

Evergreen Canned Reports - Testing

2010-03-10T13:59:00.000-08:00

Equinox has delivered a set of 29 reports for Bibliomation staff to test. They fall into three broad categories:

Library Collections (10 reports)
Library Patrons (9 reports)
Library Services (10 reports)

I've already run a handful of them, and so far, they're looking very good. For instance, we really needed an Item Count by Shelving Location report (which I had forgotten to ask Dan Scott to help us write in SQL) and that report is found under Library Collections. It seems to produce the correct results, too.

Examples of some of the other reports:

Inventory List - Lists of titles and items by shelving location and call number range
List Items Added by Date Range
List Patrons with Outstanding Balances
Count Patrons Added by Date Range
Items Loaned by Receiving Library & Date Range
Items Loaned by Sending Library & Date Range
Count In House Usage by Library Circulation Modifier

If you're curious to see the full list of reports, feel free to send me an email at terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org.

--Amy
===================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services

Douglas Library of Hebron is now LIVE on Evergreen

2010-03-10T13:51:00.001-08:00

The Douglas Library of Hebron was the second library in Bibliomation's Development Partners project to go live on Evergreen this past Monday, March 8th. We can now start seeing how holds function between these two libraries.

We have a little bit of a break before the third library, the Jonathan Trumbull Library in Lebanon, goes live (May 18th). So it should be very easy to troubleshoot any consortial issues with just two libraries for these next two and a half months.

--Amy
==========
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Equinox Press Release about BibliOak

2010-03-04T08:45:00.000-08:00

FYI

Here is Equinox's press release about the launch of Bibliomation's Development Partners Project:

"First Bibliomation Libraries Live on Evergreen"

--Amy

First Bibliomation Development Partner Goes Live!

2010-03-03T08:24:00.000-08:00

The Beacon Falls Public Library went live this morning on BibliOak, Bibliomation's Development Partner Evergreen system. Beacon Falls is the first Connecticut library to go live on Evergreen. The Douglas Library of Hebron will quickly follow them next Monday, March 8th.

Kate Sheehan, our open source implementation coordinator, is spending the entire day with Beacon Falls library staff to help them get more comfortable with using this new whiz-bang open source ILS.

To check out our BibliOak Evergreen web catalog, click here

We here at Bibliomation couldn't be more thrilled for them!

The Bibliomation Open Source Team:
Melissa Lefebvre, Open Source Project Manager
Benjamin Shum, Open Source Software Coordinator
Kate Sheehan, Open Source Implementation Coordinator
-in conjunction with-
Mary Llewellyn, Database Services Manager
Robin Fitch, Cataloger and Trainer
Carol Yarrison, Help Desk Coordinator and Circulation Trainer
Jessica Venturo, Applications Support Specialist and Trainer

--Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc.

SQL Training - Dan Scott Rocks the House

2010-02-20T06:50:00.000-08:00

Well, we just completed two days of intensive SQL training with Dan Scott, and I have to write that it was all we were hoping for and more. Not only did Dan provide us with a comprehensive overview of the basics of writing SQL queries (as well as how to insert, delete, and modify in the Evergreen database), he also delivered to us the core set of library SQL reports we needed for our development partner libraries. Since two of these libraries are going live in March, this was very timely, indeed!

Oh, and for good measure, he also helped Melissa Lefebvre, our open source project manager, figure out how to customize each of our libraries' web catalog pages so that their specific library logo/image appears in the upper left hand corner of the web catalog display. Very cool!

Dan has contributed all of his course materials to the Evergreen community. You can find them here, as a link from his blog post about his two days with us.

Be sure to thank Dan for his efforts - dan{at}coffeecode{dot}net. This is a major contribution to Planet Evergreen!

Amy
===================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

PLA Conference - Evergreen Community Happy Hour!

2010-02-18T16:14:00.000-08:00

Come join your friends in the Evergreen community at next month’s PLA conference in Portland!

We’re planning to meet up at Deschutes Brewery for beer and conversation on Thursday, March 25^th, at 5:30pm.

Here’s some more info on Deschutes:

Deschutes Brewery makes several good beers and has a new restaurant/bar. Just take the tram up to NW Everett St. stop and you're right there. 210 NW 11^th Ave.

http://www.deschutesbrewery.com

If you plan to come, please RSVP to me at terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org.

Hope to see you there!

Amy

=======================

Amy Terlaga

Assistant Director, User Services

Bibliomation

Kids' Catalog Project Gets Underway

2010-02-10T11:37:00.001-08:00

It's official - Bibliomation will be partnering with King County Library System (Washington state), the SITKA Libraries (British Columbia), and the PINES library network (Georgia Public Library Service) to develop the specifications for the very first Evergreen kids' catalog.

We will be collaborating with FGI, the Seattle-based web design firm that is also currently working with King County to develop a new interface for the Evergreen adult catalog.

Our first conference call should take place in the coming weeks. At that time we'll work on defining the business objectives of the project and identifying all areas of the project that need to be completed from a creative and technical standpoint. Then, we'll move on to the development of the project plan itself.

Once we have the project plan in place, we'll be looking for additional development partners. If your library system is interested in participating in this exciting and fun project, please drop me an email at terlagaATbiblioDOTorg.

Thanks!
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation

True Confessions...

2010-02-05T13:32:00.000-08:00

Our own Amy Terlaga was once an open-source-ILS-phobe. She tells the story of her journey from resistance to enthusiastic embrace in this month's Computers in Libraries magazine.

For our Connecticut readers, the article is available through iCONN.

Fear and trembling in Connecticut: (or 'how I learned to stop worrying and love open source') is a must-read!

-Kate

More on the Kid's Catalog

2010-01-22T12:00:00.000-08:00

As regular readers know, we've been looking for ideas for a kid's catalog. We posted our original list a few weeks ago and since then, we've held a chat session with our members to brainstorm more ideas, including:

A title suggestion feature (in addition to spell-check)
Editable buttons that lead to searches or lists
Robust sorting
Moderated reviews that use screen names
An area for customizable text to promote upcoming events
Book suggestions/ Reading lists
Feed of Kid's Events

We're working with other consortia to develop a kid's catalog that includes all of the features we need (i.e. the features we currently have in Horizon) and as many of the features we want as possible. Keep the ideas coming!

-Kate

Meetup at ALA Midwinter - SC LENDS and Massachusetts

2010-01-06T10:27:00.001-08:00

At ALA Midwinter next week, we plan to meet with some of the library directors of SC LENDS (South Carolina) and the three networks in Massachusetts (NOBLE, MVLC, and C/W MARS) with plans to move to Evergreen. It will be sometime on Saturday - either the morning or late afternoon (3:30ish). (We're still coordinating schedules at the moment.) There's a room at the convention center that ALA has set aside for these kinds of informal meetings. It's called the Networking Uncommons and it's located in Lobby B of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, near the entrance to the Exhibit Hall and ALA Store.

This will be our first chance to chat with the South Carolina folks and I'm looking forward to meeting them, to see how their Evergreen system is coming along, what kinds of enhancements they still need, and where we might be able to share in some of the development effort.

If you're interested in participating in or just sitting in on the conversation, drop me an email - terlagaATbiblioDOTorg.

==================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services

PostgreSQL Training with Dan Scott

2009-12-29T11:14:00.000-08:00

We've been busy setting up some Evergreen training with Equinox. In mid-January we'll receive some admin training as well as a 1.6 update, including Acquisitions.

We also need to learn how to write PostgreSQL queries, but Equinox doesn't offer a training class on this at this time. I've tried to write some queries on my own, based on my Sybase SQL knowledge, but what I've discovered is that the syntax doesn't translate well. Equinox recommended two PostgreSQL companies to us - I inquired, but soon discovered that the cost for these classes was too outrageously expensive for a non-profit like Bibliomation to swing.

Enter Dan Scott, relational database expert. Dan is systems librarian at Laurentian University, in Ontario. I had a chance to hear him speak at a one-day Lyrasis conference last October called "Open Source in your Library," and he was fantastic. Since he was able to answer some of my specific SQL query questions on the general Evergreen listserv, I thought he would be up to the challenge of teaching us what we needed to know about Postgres, so I emailed him. He has agreed to not only train us, but to customize the two-day class to our specific needs!

He writes:
[...]I would want to make the course materials available under a Creative Commons license so that others can build on & benefit from the content. I think it would make a nice complement to the Evergreen developer workshop, and a great contribution to the community.

We need to give him some time to prepare his course materials, but we are hoping to have him down here sometime before two of our developmental partner libraries go live on Evergreen the first week in March 2010.

Three cheers for Dan Scott!

Amy
===================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Hey Kids!

2009-12-21T12:25:00.000-08:00

And those who work with them...
As Amy said in the last post, we recently sent out an email to our school media specialists asking for their wishlist for a kid's catalog. We've gotten a few replies and we'd love to hear more from our school media specialists and our children's librarians.

The top requests are:

Search by title, author, subject, keyword, and series.

Title searches that don't require the use of quotation marks to bring up one-word titles.

Spellcheck

The ability to sort results, especially sort by call number.

Results with the location in bold

The ability to add local subject buttons to the main page.

So far, we have good news for you! The regular Evergreen OPAC does a number of these things already. It is possible to search by title, author, subject keyword and series and searches by title for books like Night and Bud Not Buddy turn up the appropriate book as the top result.

Evergreen does have a spellcheck and it does allow sorting of results, though I think we'll have to add call number to our list of requests. The advanced search screen does allow the searcher to limit results to Fiction or Nonfiction, so it's possible that we could incorporate that feature into the results on a kid's catalog.

We brainstormed with some librarians from King County about possible features for a kids catalog and we'd love your feedback on some of these ideas.

Like you, we want to enable local buttons on the main interface – right now, you all have the same buttons on the front page of the kid's catalog. We'd like to have a mechanism for each library to create their own buttons with their own searches.

Other ideas we had:

The ability for each library to customize their individual kid’s catalog to their needs

The ability to choose from a variety of image sets in the customization of these picture-based subject categories

The ability to restrict to just juvenile content searches if the library desired; customizable by library

Kid's catalog should build upon current Evergreen OPAC limiters to include reading levels and series information

The inclusion of grade reading levels in the bibliographic record search results

The ability to customize each search button so that the search can be optimized to the library’s individual catalog

The ability to customize each button so that, instead of a search, a reading list of web catalog links and web site links can be produced for the user to follow

The ability for the user to rate each title

The ability for the user to write a review for each item in the catalog

The ability for user reviews to be sent to the individual library for moderation purposes before they are posted

Keep your suggestions coming and we'll keep adding to our list.
-Kate
+~+~+~+~+~
Kate Sheehan
Open Source Implementation Coordinator
ksheehan{at}biblio{dot}org

A Kids' Catalog for Bibliomation's Schools

2009-12-15T08:06:00.001-08:00

We've just begun a dialogue with King County Library System (KCLS) to see if we can work together in the development of a children's graphical, icon-driven web catalog for Evergreen. KCLS web librarians, Lisa Hill and Melissa Falgout, seem very enthusiastic about the project. We have a decent length of time to dream up some really cool functionality for this kids' catalog - the target completion date is September 2011.

The most important feature we'd like to see in this graphical kids' catalog is the ability to customize - the graphical buttons, the searches attached to those buttons, and even the flexibility to allow for a list of bibliographic and web resources attached to some buttons, based on the individual library's needs.

We hope to send off our wish list of features to the Seattle-based web design company, FGI, for a ballpark price quote later this month. In the meantime, we're asking our school librarians for their suggestions so that we can flesh out that wish list.

Amy
===============
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Conference Call with King County, Mass. Networks

2009-12-07T07:05:00.000-08:00

We had a conference call last Thursday, December 3rd, with King County and the three Massachusetts networks (MVLC, NOBLE, and C/W MARS) that plan to move to Evergreen in 2011. We're hoping to collaborate with these and other interested library systems on Evergreen software development. It was a very productive phone call - we've established future meetings at ALA MidWinter (Boston), PLA in March 2010 (Portland, OR), the Evergreen conference in Grand Rapids, MI (April 2010), and Summer 2010 ALA in Washington, D.C.

Jed Moffitt of King County suggested that the Massachusetts folks take a look at KCLS' software requirement specs to see if they can follow their format for their own. He also volunteered to show them King County's enhancements to the circulation client sometime in January so that they will know what's coming soon before they spend time on their own software development needs.

I've also emailed contacts at Evergreen Indiana, SC LENDS (South Carolina), and Georgia PINES to see if they would also like to participate in these later discussions at future library conferences.

The more, the merrier, as they say.

--Amy
============================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Mike and Amy's Odyssey Begins

2009-12-01T07:21:00.000-08:00

Mike Simonds, Bibliomation's CEO, and I have begun our Grand Odyssey to all of Bibliomation's libraries. We plan to visit each one so that we can bring our members up to speed with our open source exploration and our selection of the Evergreen system as our next generation ILS, with a migration in 2011. This is also a perfect opportunity for our libraries to ask us questions about Evergreen and open source software in general.

The first two libraries we visited were the Middlebury Public Library and the Southbury Public Library. The Middlebury staff are eager to move to Evergreen and would like us to move sooner rather than later in 2011. This is dependent on the software development success in 2010; both Acquisitions and Serials will need to be tested to make sure that they will meet our needs. The Southbury staff expressed their happiness over our decision to move to a standard set of loan periods for our public libraries - 7 days for DVDs and videos, 14 days for new materials, and 21 days for most everything else. This will make it easier for the patrons, they thought. These new loan periods will be in place by July 1, 2010.

We will take a brief hiatus from our odyssey in December so that we can interview candidates for our open Applications Support Specialist position, but will resume in January 2010. We plan to target those libraries that haven't made it to our regional meetings and may still be a bit in the dark concerning our open source plans.

Let the Grand Odyssey begin!

Amy
====================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

What’s coming down the pike?

2009-11-25T11:33:00.000-08:00

The Development Partners are hard at work preparing for their conversion to Evergreen. For some, this means some serious time in the stacks – rebarcoding with the machine pictured here (or barcoding for the first time) is on their to do lists in addition to the usual weeding and record clean-up that goes with a migration.

Bibliomation staffers are profiling the development partners and getting Evergreen 1.6 installed. Evergreen 1.6 just became available and features a beta version of the acquisitions module slated for release in version 2.0 (due out in 2010).

In December and January, we’ll be working with Equinox to get the profiling data into our production server and start testing batches of records. As the winter progresses, we’ll be developing our training and documentation (and testing it out on the development partners).
Development partners will begin to go live in early March 2010! We’ll see Evergreen in action and be able to test developments for the rest of the consortium. Our open source migration is on its way!
-Kate
+~+~+~+~+~
Kate Sheehan
Open Source Implementation Coordinator
ksheehan{at}biblio{dot}org

Open Source Presentation in December

2009-11-23T07:59:00.000-08:00

The Connecticut Library Consortium (CLC) is sponsoring a series of presentations on open source migrations at CT libraries. In October, the University of Hartford presented on their migration to LibLime's Koha, last week the Goodwin College, in East Hartford presented on their migration to Koha, using ByWater Solutions, and next month is Bibliomation's turn to talk about our selection of Evergreen.

Here is the announcement from the CLC, just posted this morning on their listserv:

Join us for the next in CLC’s Open Source Series

“How’s it Going?” An Inside Look at Bibliomation’s Migration to Evergreen

Friday, December 11, 2009
9:30 coffee, 10:00-noon meeting
Middlebury Public Library
Free to CLC Members

Register online now!

Just 18 months ago, Bibliomation's Planning Committee, Board of Directors, and User Council made the decision to move in the direction of Open Source. Now they have decided to establish Evergreen as the preferred migration path of the network's Integrated Library System, supported by Equinox. Bibliomation's staff will discuss their impending migration with CT colleagues. Register online now!

Good News!

2009-11-19T12:24:00.000-08:00

Hooray! LibraryThing for Libraries now works with Evergreen! You can see it in action at Kent County Public Library in Maryland.

-Kate
Kate Sheehan
Open Source Implementation Coordinator
ksheehan{at}biblio{dot}org

2009-11-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, Amy and I went to CLA’s speed mentoring session. We met LIS students, new librarians and those considering library school. Almost every time I talked about our move to Evergreen, I was asked what open source is. It seemed like everyone had heard the term and had a vague sense of what it meant, but longed for a more concrete understanding of what all the fuss was about. After giving my (speedy) explanation a few times, I thought I should post an open source cheat sheet here for our members to refer to. For a more thorough explanation, see our Open Source FAQ (which is a Word document).

What is Open Source?
The short answer: Open source software allows anyone to see and change the underlying code.

A more complete answer: The code underlying open source software is freely available to anyone who wants to improve or modify it. The result is a community-developed product that’s more secure and stable, and offers a rich set of features.

A little more nuance: Open source software uses an open licensing structure. You know those looooong blocks of fine print that pop up when you install new software? Those are End User License Agreements, and they usually prohibit the user from modifying the software or giving it away (among other things).
Open source software, by definition, requires free redistribution and access to the source code. A complete list of criteria can be found on the Open Source Initiative’s website: http://opensource.org/docs/osd

And this is good because?
Software that is developed by a community has the advantage of having many eyes and hands looking at and working on the product. Security loopholes are spotted and closed quickly and features are developed and released regularly.

In the case of an ILS, the speed at which features are added is particularly good news for our patrons. OPAC tools and toys will be available before they’re obsolete and the library’s primary discovery tool will keep pace with the web. On the staff side, an intuitive interface and a customizable report structure are huge benefits. When one library makes an improvement to their system, that change will be made available to all libraries using the system.
No software it perfect, of course, but open source software gives users more freedom to make (or ask for) the improvements they’d like to see.

Does anyone else use open source software?
Almost everyone does, in some way, shape, or form. Firefox is an open source alternative to Internet Explorer and Open Office is an alternative to Microsoft Office. Both are successful projects with lots of users.

More popular, though, are server-side packages that are used by companies and organizations worldwide. Many websites are hosted on servers running a suite of open source software commonly called LAMP (for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) and chances are, you've visited, shopped on, or worked on a site on a LAMP server.

The move to Evergreen will be a big change. Thanks to the community of open source enthusiasts, programmers, and companies, it will be a change for the better!

Don't forget to join our Evergreen discussion list - send an email to join-evergreen@biblio.org. You can also find us on Facebook!

-Kate
+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
Kate Sheehan
Open Source Implementation Coordinator
ksheehan{at}biblio{dot}org

Lists, Lists, and More Lists

2009-11-15T17:05:00.000-08:00

Our open source team has been busy, creating listservs to keep our member libraries informed of our Evergreen developments.

The first list, BibliOak, will be used as a communication tool for us and our development partner libraries - The Beacon Falls Library, The Douglas Library, Hebron, The Slater Library, Griswold, and The Windham Free Library. The second list, Evergreen, will give us a vehicle to reach out to Bibliomation's 48 public libraries and 20 K-12 schools as we move forward with our Evergreen software exploration. There is a third list, created by the folks at Equinox, called "bibliomation-migration" - this list will be the primary means of our communicating back and forth with our migration team at Equinox.

DEVELOPMENT PARTNER UPDATE:
Melissa Lefebvre and Kate Sheehan will be providing online Evergreen client and web catalog demonstrations this week to our development partner libraries.

Kate will also be delivering our newly acquired ITG Scan & Print system to the Beacon Falls Library so that they can update their item barcodes to 14 digits. After Beacon Falls has completed this re-barcoding process, the system will then be delivered to the Douglas Library, in Hebron, so that they can re-barcode their items in time for the March 2010 migration to Evergreen.

Amy
====================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Equinox Contract Signed

2009-11-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

Today we signed the contract with Equinox, making our partnership with them official.

We also had a conference call this morning with Shae Tetterton, Equinox's Project Manager for Bibliomation. We've set up weekly migration meetings with Shae, beginning on Monday, November 30th and lasting until our development partner libraries are live on Evergreen that first week in March of 2010.

Shae will be sending us some migration profiling documents so that we can use them to develop our own, to be used with each development partner library. Shae also mentioned that Equinox can help us clean up the bibliographic and patron data if we should find any anomalies. Regarding the item barcodes, Shae will be checking to see if Evergreen can validate on their 14-digit length to avoid mis-scans getting entered into the system as the libraries are entering their holdings.

We're looking forward to working with the Equinox migration team over these next few months!

--Amy
=============
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Meet the Open Source Team: Spotlight on Kate Sheehan

2009-11-07T07:53:00.001-08:00

Kate Sheehan is Bibliomation's Open Source Implementation Coordinator. Monday, November 9th is her first day on the job.

Question: What made you want to work at Bibliomation?

Answer: The [open source] project is ridiculously exciting. I started paying attention to Bibliomation's investigation of open source systems during the state library's open source system exploratory meetings with the various libraries in the state. I've also never worked for a consortium before. I really like the project and the newness of it.

Question: What is your educational background?

Answer: I have a Bachelor's in Geology from Smith College. I graduated in 2000. I received my MLIS from Simmons in January 2004.

Question: What is your work history? Which job(s) did you enjoy the most?

Answer: I worked at the Ferguson Library, in Stamford, for two years. I split my time in half between reference and IT work there. I also worked nights and weekends at UCONN Stamford during my time at Ferguson. I was responsible for IT at the Hamden Public Library. I was Coordinator of Library Automation at the Danbury Public Library for two years. I really enjoyed my time there. My last job was as Head of Reference at the Darien Public Library. I was there from March of '08 until now.

I liked all of my jobs in different ways. I learned different things at each job and gave of myself in different ways. I like variety. There's no moss under my feet.

Question: How did you select Library Science?

Answer: I had a job as a research assistant at a market research firm. I liked the research part, but not the for-profit part. Both of my parents are social workers; I wanted to help people. I grew up around a helping profession. I can help people without being a therapist.

Question: What do you like most about Evergreen?

Answer: I like the principles of open source. It returns access to the data to the libraries; they have control over it, power over it, and in turn, can turn that over to the patrons. What's been interesting for me -- these are [small] libraries that right now don't have anything online for their patrons. It's clearly intuitive to the patrons what should be there. When we bring [these libraries] up, [the patrons] will recognize it, it will all be there. The libraries will go from 0 to 60, they'll be exactly where they'll need to be.

Question: What do you like to do in your free time?

Answer: I am an occasional knitter. My husband and I like to go into the City for plays and museums. I like to go to concerts -- jazz and the occasional rock show. I like to read -- my beach reading is the mystery novel. Just finished the new Thomas Cook. I really like Tana French. The Likeness and In the Woods are astoundingly good. I read a lot of non-fiction. Because I spend a lot of time in the car, I listen to a lot of books on CD. I also listen to a lot of podcasts. My favorite podcasts right now are This American Life, Grammar Girl, The Moth, and Ricky Gervais with Stephen Merchant [co-creators of the British version of The Office].

Kate Sheehan can be reached at ksheehanATbiblioDOTorg.
Amy Terlaga, Assistant Director, User Services and open source interviewer, can be reached at terlagaATbiblioDOTorg.

BibliOak Project Timeline Established

2009-11-05T10:34:00.000-08:00

Bibliomation staff had a really good open source meeting yesterday afternoon. Melissa Lefebvre, our Open Source Project Manager, presented the first draft of our BibliOak Development Partner migration timeline. The planned Go Live Date for the three automated development partner libraries is the first week of March 2010. We'll be plenty busy until that time. We've already met with Beacon Falls, Windham Free, and the Douglas Library, Hebron for our initial orientation meeting. We meet with the Slater Library, Griswold this Friday.

The Windham Free Library is a "virgin" (non-automated) library so they will have a barcoding project to begin soon. The other three libraries have non-standard item barcodes so we will be using the ITG Scan & Print system to generate 14-digit barcodes with unique library prefixes for each of them. The programming is almost completed on ITG's end for Beacon Falls, the first library to take on this task.

Melissa will be providing online demonstrations of the Evergreen staff client and web catalog for all four development partners the week of November 16th. Then we will be meeting with each library for all-day profiling sessions so that we can record their collection needs and circulation policies, to be programmed into their Evergreen server.

Nice to have a good plan in place!

Amy
====================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

BibliOak: Logo Unveiled

2009-10-30T07:15:00.000-07:00

Here is the new logo for Bibliomation's Open Source Project. The BibliOak logo was designed by Scott Clark, a freelance graphic designer. We are very pleased with the way our new logo came out. It went through several iterations until we hit upon this one. The oak tree, Connecticut's state tree, is perfect for the O.

We hope you like it as much as we do.

Amy
===============
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Meet the Open Source Team: Spotlight on Ben Shum

2009-10-28T09:37:00.001-07:00

Ben Shum is Bibliomation's Open Source Software Coordinator.

Question: You began working at Bibliomation this past summer. How were you found for this position? What have been your job responsibilities since you joined the Bibliomation staff?

Answer: The company, PTFS, placed an ad on behalf of Bibliomation. They were looking for someone with computer/open source software development experience and I had three of the twelve skills listed - Java script, HTML, and Linux experience. I submitted my application on a Thursday, I was called by PTFS on the following Friday, and by that Monday I was being interviewed by Bibliomation. It all happened rather fast. I should also tell you that I was very excited at the prospect of working at Bibliomation. In one of my MLS classes, Foundations in Librarianship, my professor, Dr. Lisa Forman, spoke of Bibliomation's recent investigation of open source library systems. Immediately after I was hired, PTFS sent me to the Evergreen conference in Georgia.

I've been doing all things open source-related since I was hired by Bibliomation.

Question: What kind of work have you been collaborating with Melissa on with regard to the Bibliomation Evergreen test server?

Answer: I put together the test server -- I installed the operating system and the Evergreen software by the second day on the job. I then concentrated on learning the in's and out's of the system. The bugs that I found in version 1.4, I reported to the Evergreen community through the Evergreen IRC chat, and that was my entree into the community itself. They would let me know that the bug was already reported. I also became acquainted with the Evergreen email lists, their dokuwiki pages, and the change logs.

Question: What is your educational background?

Answer: I received my Bachelors of Science in Computer Systems Administration from Andrews University in Michigan in 2008. I'm now in my second year of Southern CT State University's MLS program.

Question: How did you select Library Science?

Answer: It was a lunch with a librarian when I was still an undergrad. It sounded like something I'd want to do - I've always liked the information aspects of computers, always liked documentation. In high school, I worked in the registrar's office and helped with records management. I'm good at most of the steps in the software development cycle - planning, designing, documenting, coding, testing, and maintenance.

Question: What do you like most about Evergreen?

Answer: I like that it's open source, that you can see what you can change. An open-source ILS is not free in the sense of price or efforts. It still requires tremendous thought and preparation. In the end, the product of hard work will belong to us, not a vendor or others. But "us" is not merely the few of "us" here, but the whole community. It is a contribution for the whole, enriching us all.

Question: What do you like to do in your free time?

Answer: I like spending time with my family and friends. Work and school make up my life these days. I enjoy listening to music, especially movie and television soundtracks. Jerry Goldsmith is one of my favorite composers. He did the scores for Star Trek and Air Force One. I also like to play with Ubuntu Linux when I have a free moment.

Ben Shum can be reached at bshumATbiblioDOTorg.
Amy Terlaga, Assistant Director, User Services, and Open Source Team interviewer, can be reached at terlagaATbiblioDOTorg.

Meet the Open Source Team: Spotlight on Melissa Lefebvre

2009-10-27T07:16:00.000-07:00

Melissa Lefebvre is Bibliomation's Open Source Project Manager.

Question: How long have you been working for Bibliomation? What job responsibilities have you held?

Answer: I began working at Bibliomation in 2004. My primary job responsibility is web services administration for Bibliomation's member libraries. I handle the web catalog customization, as well as web server support. I also support our web catalog add-ons, like WowBrary (new item lists) and our PC/Print Management system, LibraryMetricks. I am now also responsible for project managing Bibliomation's migration to Evergreen.

Question: What is your responsibility as Open Source Project Manager for Bibliomation?

Answer: My ultimate goal is to migrate our 48 public libraries and 20 K-12 schools to Evergreen. Before that migration, I will project manage the migration of our four development partner public libraries to Evergreen. I also will be spreading the good word of the open source ILS to the greater library world. I want to dispel the myth that the open source ILS is a primitive system. It is fully functional and will be ready for our libraries to use on Day One.

Question: What is your educational background?

Answer: I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fine Art Photography from RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) in '97. I then received my Photographic Conservation Certificate two years later from the George Eastman House in Rochester. Then came my MLS - I received that degree in 2004 from Southern CT State University, in New Haven. My first library job was at the Middlebury Public Library. While there I interned at Bibliomation and was eventually hired.

Question: What do you like most about Evergreen?

Answer: From the community standpoint, I love the consortial aspect, their willingness to share their resources. I love this communal sharing among the libraries. From a program standpoint, I love the RSS feeds in the OPAC. Our libraries will be able to use them to provide new item lists; they could also be used to provide school summer reading lists. I also like the fact that Evergreen has a staff client. This is what our libraries are used to.

Question: What do you like to do in your free time?

Answer: What free time? Ideally, I use my free time to do photography. I also like to hike. I'm interested in forensic science so anything oriented to that - the show, NCIS and books on forensics -- I'm interested in. I have a two-year old so I'm also into coloring, and I make a mean batch of Play-Doh. I also like to make lotions and lip balms - I made some cheeky chocolate lip balm last Christmas that tasted like an Andes mint.

Melissa can be reached at mlefebvreATbiblioDOTorg.
Amy Terlaga, Bibliomation's Assistant Director and open source team interviewer, can be reached at terlagaATbiblioDOTorg.

Open Source -- Growing Interest among CT Libraries

2009-10-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

This morning I attended the University of Hartford's presentation on their July 14th migration to LibLime's Enterprise Koha. Ben Ide, Tech Services Librarian for their library, explained why they made the move to open source and how their migration went - what went well, what didn't, and what still needs to happen to make Koha function well for them. (They're still waiting on course reserves, the importing of authorities, the acquisitions module called GetIt, browsing, and music searches so that their music librarians are able to pull up all records in their collection related to their search.) The University of Hartford had partnered with WALDO so that they could pool their financial and staff resources in a cooperative arrangement that will help them finance further software enhancements.

There were a number of librarians from stand-alone systems at this University of Hartford presentation. When I explained to the group Bibliomation's plans to migrate to Evergreen within the next two years and that we'd be open to hosting other libraries on our servers, this seemed to pique the interest of at least a few members of the group. Nate Curulla, Director of Marketing for the open source support vendor, ByWater Solutions, was there to answer anyone's questions about the kind of training and support models they can provide interested libraries. Chris Bradley, from the CT Library Consortium, was also there; she would like to explore some kind of an open source support partnership with Bibliomation somewhere down the road.

We are living in interesting times!

Amy
==================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Conversation with Catherine Lemmer of the Indiana State Library

2009-10-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I had a chance to talk with Catherine Lemmer, the Project Manager of the Indiana State Library's Evergreen migration.

By the end of November, Indiana, with the help of Equinox, will have migrated 48 of their libraries over to Evergreen. Twelve of these libraries had non-standard item barcodes. Indiana used ITG's Scan & Print system to generate 14 digit barcodes from these non-standard ones. They did this with a software program written by ITG that pads each item barcode with a five-digit unique prefix for each library and additional zeroes for padding to get to those 14 digits.

Indiana used 20 printers that generated these new item barcodes when scanned. Catherine claims that it is so easy to use ITG's Scan & Print system that everyone from high school volunteers to the octogenarian set can do it. They've barcoded items from 30,000 to as many as 160,000 in a library collection. They even barcoded as many as 35,000 items in one weekend with 7 printers going simultaneously.

Towards the end of our conversation, Catherine suggested that I talk to the folks at the North Texas Library Consortium who have also migrated to Evergreen. They also used ITG's Scan & Print System and might have additional insights and suggestions for me.

I'll close by saying that it was a real pleasure talking with Catherine. She and I agreed to stay in touch as Indiana may be migrating 4 schools to Evergreen as a pilot project. Bibliomation has 20 K-12 schools and we would be interested in their findings.

Amy
==================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

BibliOak - A Bibliomation Open Source Project

2009-10-19T11:33:00.001-07:00

We have come up with a name for our developmental partner project -- BibliOak. It's very catchy, isn't it? (The oak is the state tree of Connecticut.) We have a graphic designer working on the logo for us and it should be ready for prime time very soon.

We also had a "planning to plan" conference call with the folks at Equinox last Friday. We might be able to bring all four developmental partner libraries up at the same time with a possible target date of mid-February 2010. Melissa Lefebvre, our Open Source Project Manager, will develop the time line to see if we can make ends meet.

During the phone call with Equinox, we learned of a good way for our developmental partner libraries to re-barcode their collections. (Currently, the three automated libraries have non-standard barcodes and the potential for duplication is too great for them to go into the system as is.) Shae Tetterton, of Equinox, explained to us Indiana's use of ITG's Scan & Print system, a device that adds a unique library identifier to the existing item barcode upon checkout. The Scan & Print system then prints out an item barcode label, ready to slap right over the old item barcode onto the book itself! I hope to talk to someone at Indiana shortly to learn more about their use of this ITG Scan & Print system.

More information to follow ....

Amy
===============
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Evergreen Demonstration, Massachusetts Network Meeting

2009-10-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

The following is excerpted from a Connecticut Library Consortium (CLC) email listserv posting, made earlier this afternoon:

Friday, December 11, 2009
How's It Going?: An Inside Look at Bibliomation's Migration to Evergreen 9:30 coffee, 10:00-noon meeting Middlebury PL
Online Registration coming soon at www.ctlibrarians.org.

Just 18 months ago Bibliomation's Planning Committee, Board of Directors, and User Council made the decision to move in the direction of Open Source. Now they have decided to establish Evergreen as the preferred migration path of the network's Integrated Library System, supported by Equinox.

Bibliomation's staff will discuss their impending migration with CT colleagues. In addition, staff from the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium in Massachusetts will be coming down to Connecticut to see the presentation and discuss what kinds of enhancements they could co-sponsor. (The three large networks in Massachusetts--NOBLE, C.W. MARS and Merrimack Valley--have been working on an Open Source solution that could be shared between their organizations. The Tri-Network Committee has just recommended Evergreen as the platform of choice. That decision has to be ratified by the three network boards, but they have already been awarded a joint $412,000 LSTA Grant specifically to develop an Open Source alternative for the state!) As Bibliomation's CEO Mike Simonds says, "Needless to say, it will be very beneficial for us to have a large cooperative Evergreen project in our neighbor to the north."

The Library 2.0 Gang On Open Source

2009-10-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

"Can the open source ILS sector scale?" is the question the Library 2.0 Gang asks this month.

Listen to host, Richard Wallis, gang members, Carl Grant, Marshall Breeding, and Frances Haugen, and guest panelist, Brendan Gallagher (of ByWater Solutions), as they kick the open source ILS ball around.

The gang all agreed -- Leadership in the open source library community is key to the sustainability of the open source ILS marketplace.

To listen to this October 8th podcast, go to:
http://librarygang.talis.com/2009/10/08/library-2-0-gang-1009-can-the-open-source-ils-business-scale/

--Amy
==================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Evergreen, Drupal, Focus of Lyrasis Conference

2009-10-10T07:51:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I attended a one-day Lyrasis conference at the Olin College of Engineering, in Needham, MA, called "Open Source in Your Library." (Lyrasis, formed by the merger of PALINET and SOLINET, just merged with NELINET.) The three speakers for the day were:

Joe Lucia, Director of Falvey Memorial Library, Villanova University
Dan Scott, Systems Librarian, Laurentian University, Ontario
Karen Coombs, Head of Web Services, University of Houston Libraries

The message that ran through each of the presenters' presentations was, "Don't be afraid to try open source in your library. It may help to save us from irrelevance."

Joe Lucia kicked things off by providing his ideological views on the benefits of the open source community for libraries. He emphasized the importance of "the commons," a social and cultural platform for libraries for the exchange and refinement of ideas. Joe also outlined some of the challenges open source faces before it can grab hold in a major way; he mentioned Marshall Breeding's 2008 Library Automation Survey, a reality check for those of us open source evangelists:

We're still a small minority in the greater library automation picture
We have a "true believer" problem, in that we preach to the already converted
We need to get more good reviews in the support vendor marketplace

Other challenges Lucia outlined had more to do with today's generation of librarians, that if we have to wait until the next generation to make the open source leap, this might already be too late. Our professional culture is marked by timid leadership, legacy data standards (ex: the MARC record), complete investment in legacy institutions (ex: OCLC), and the notion that open source must be perfect before it is embraced. Joe didn't stop there in his laundry list of challenges - libraries have fixed/diminishing funds, a long addiction to proprietary vendor support, a lack of technical confidence, and too much dependence on a small cadre of talented individuals, instead of strong communities. In addition, the big vendor companies are competing head-to-head with open source by developing OPAC discovery tool add-ons, further dividing libraries and keeping them addicted to this proprietary vendor industry.

Joe ended his presentation on a positive note by providing a basic roadmap for libraries to follow so that a robust open source community can flourish. The most important point he made - stop investing in expensive hardware and proprietary vendor software and support, and start investing in talented staff with technical expertise and collaborative open source communities.

Dan Scott, of Laurentian University, explained his work on Project Conifer, a shared Evergreen migration and software development project with many universities in Ontario, Canada. These universities migrated to Evergreen in May 2009, after approximately two years of development work and testing on Evergreen, including:

OPAC interface improvements (internationalization features added, customized OPAC skins)
The addition of localized URIs
The creation of basic serials display and editing screens
A Reserves module
Lots of input on how Acq works in Canadian academic institutions
Z39.50 server maturity
Early testing of the Evergreen 1.6 release

Dan emphasized the importance of communication for open source to work, that the software can only improve when you report back to the community, not just to your particular open source support vendor.

Dan also mentioned that Laurentian's reference staff and students had to get used to the simplicity of the OPAC search, that the relevancy ranking in Evergreen is so good that the keyword search is often the best way to go when using the library catalog.

Karen Coombs, Web Services Librarian Extraordinaire, evangelized on all things Drupal. With Drupal, one of the more popular open source content management systems out there, you can "de-silo-ize" your library's many library resources for better integration in searching. Karen highlighted many of Drupal's search and social networking features like RSS feeds, organic groups, faceted searching, user tags, user ratings, and reviews. The best live example of beefing up your library catalog on Drupal with many of these social networking features - John Blyberg's Darien Library catalog, called SOPAC. She ended her presentation with a plea to all, to not be afraid to try out one of these open source CMSes, that Wordpress, one of the easiest open source CMSes out there, can be tricked out in all sorts of amazing ways for patron enjoyment.

The conference ended with a Question and Answer session with most audience attendees showing an eagerness to move forward with open source if only they could convince their administrators that it would be worth it in the long run to take a chance on the open source movement.

--Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Bibliomation to use Equinox for Developmental Partners' Migrations

2009-10-05T13:42:00.000-07:00

We had our first planning phone call with Shae Tetterton, Project Manager, and Galen Charlton, VP for Data Services, of Equinox. Equinox will be migrating over the bibs, items, and patrons for three of our four developmental partner libraries. (The fourth library, the Windham Free Library, is not currently automated.)

The four developmental partner libraries are:

This first planning phone call was very encouraging. Shae assured us that soon after the contract with Equinox is signed, they would set up a Project Kick-Off phone call, and there would be regularly scheduled calls following this initial call.

Our tentative plan is to have the first developmental partner library live by the end of January 2010.

Stay tuned for more . . .

Amy
-------------
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Kate Sheehan joins Bibliomation's Open Source Team

2009-10-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

The following excerpt was taken from an email earlier today from Mike Simonds, Bibliomation's CEO, to Bibliomation's library directors:

Bibliomation is delighted to announce that Kate Sheehan will be joining its staff in November. Kate is well known in Connecticut as a Technology Columnist for Connecticut Libraries, and for her innovative work in implementing “LibraryThing for Libraries” at the Danbury Public Library. She has also presented at several Computers in Libraries Conferences.

Kate has accepted the newly created position of Open Source Implementation Coordinator. In that capacity she will round out the Bibliomation Evergreen team that includes the Open Source Project Manager, Melissa Lefebvre, and the Bibliomation Software Coordinator, Ben Shum. This is the team that will be responsible for implementing the Bibliomation Evergreen Developmental Partners Project this fall.
==============================

You can read more about Kate and her views on open source on her blog, Loose Cannon Librarian (http://loosecannonlibrarian.net/).

--Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Conference Call with King County

2009-10-01T12:29:00.000-07:00

Bibliomation staff participated earlier this afternoon in a GoToMeeting/conference call with Jed Moffitt and Matt Carlson of King County Library System (KCLS). King County has poured quite a bit of development dollars into Evergreen enhancements, including refinements to their Circulation client and development of their Acquisitions module. (They have contracted with Equinox for these enhancements to Evergreen.)

King County has also just won a sizable IMLS grant to the tune of $998,556 so that they can further develop the peer-to-peer support model that works so well among public libraries.

Matt Carlson showed off some of the new circulation screens and emphasized that the driving developmental force behind these new screens was a focused eye on usability. They have streamlined the circulation interface in ways that make perfect sense. Some examples (some of which have been rolled into the Evergreen 1.6 client):

Checkout, checkin buttons on a toolbar
Patron registration can now be completed all on one screen
Built-in, configurable links to help screens, circulation manual
Patron search now displays horizontally, giving more real estate to the results screen
Patron screen gives a quick summary of number of items, bills, etc.
Can now easily add a patron note, alert, or block to patron record
Can now place hold from within the patron record without the need to enter in the patron information again
Ability to display item detail information on one screen from item status
Plans to add item history (last 10 items) from the Check-in Screen

We'd like to publicly thank Jed and Matt for taking the time to show us some of the fruits of their labor. They have made some fantastic enhancements to the Evergreen staff client and I am so grateful that the rest of us who are Evergreen-bound will be able to reap the benefit of it. We here at Bibliomation are very much looking forward to the possibility of collaborating with KCLS on Evergreen improvements in the future.

--Amy Terlaga / Assistant Director, User Services / terlagaATbiblioDOTorg

Network Services Meeting

2009-10-01T09:33:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, Network Services met and got their first look at Bibliomation Evergreen 1.4 (our demo/test server). There was a lot of excitement in the air as I was showing Evergreen to them. The members also had some great suggestions as to things that would further improve Evergreen and those suggestions are:

1) Have a button in the patron's account so that they can request a change of address/phone number which would alert staff to a new address/phone next time the patron was checking out items in the library so that library staff could update the patron's information accordingly.

2) An option for patrons to "opt-in" to see their check out history which should only be available to the patrons if they decide they want to keep track of the books they read.

3) A way to exempt fines due to library closing for special events.

4) Book-Drop mode. Currently you can set the check in date manually, but a book-drop mode button that would automatically set the date to the library's last open day of service would really help staff (especially over long weekends or holiday closings)

5) The ability to print receipts via a Function key.

Thanks to everyone who participated and gave excellent ideas and thoughts. This is what open source is all about....sharing ideas to improve the ILS.

-Melissa

Biblio's Open Source Project now on Facebook

2009-09-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

Hi all--

Bibliomation's Open Source Developmental Partners Project now has a home on Facebook.

Four small public libraries - the Douglas Library, in Hebron, the Slater Library, in Griswold, the Beacon Falls Library, and the Windham Free Library - have volunteered to work with Bibliomation in a pilot project which will allow us to implement and test new enhancements to the Evergreen software.

To join the group:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=171935276419

For questions about the project itself, you can email Bibliomation's Open Source Project Manager, Melissa Lefebvre at mlefebvreATbiblioDOTorg.

Amy

Bibliomation Board approves Evergreen recommendation

2009-09-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

The following message was first posted on September 25th by Mike Simonds, CEO of Bibliomation, on Connecticut's conntech listserv, a list that focuses on technology in CT's libraries:
[Any questions you may have regarding our migration plan can be sent to me at terlagaATbiblioDOTorg] --Amy

================================

On September 24^th the Bibliomation Board of Directors voted to accept a staff recommendation to establish the Evergreen Open Source Software system as the future migration path for the network. This recommendation was based on fifteen months of investigation. The Bibliomation staff download both the Evergreen and Koha Open Source Software products, loaded identical sets of test records on both systems, then evaluated the two products against over 120 separate functional requirements. This testing provided conclusive evidence that the Evergreen option is the more consortia friendly of the Open Source alternatives currently available.

This decision does not imply an imminent system migration for Bibliomation. There are still a number of enhancements to the Evergreen Software that we feel will be necessary before such a migration is feasible. We will, however, move ahead with the Bibliomation Developmental Partners Project. Four small public libraries have volunteered to work with the network in a pilot project which will allow us to implement and test new enhancements to the Evergreen software. Bibliomation will migrate each of these libraries into a small, fully functional shared Evergreen system, which will, in turn act as a test bed for the software improvements as they are developed. In return for their cooperation in this project Bibliomation has created a very favorable cost structure that will fully reflect the potential financial savings Open Source has to offer libraries.

The four libraries that have agreed to participate in this project are: The Beacon Falls Public Library, The Douglas Library Association of Hebron, The Slater Library in Griswold, and the Windham Free Library Association. We will be scheduling profiling meetings with these libraries in October and hope to have a functioning shared Evergreen cooperative system operational in Connecticut by early 2010.

Michael J. Simonds

Chief Executive Officer

Bibliomation, Inc.

32 Crest Road

Middlebury, CT. 06762

203-577-4070 x106

msimondsATbiblioDOTorg

A Day with Equinox: Evergreen Exploration

2008-12-11T05:22:00.000-08:00

We'll be spending some time over the next few months to investigate the consortial functionality of Evergreen.

We're starting with a day-long session with Shae Tetterton, project manager at Equinox, the support vendor for Evergreen software development, implementation, and hosting services.

We've sent Shae some of our current functionality needs as well as some wish list items and she plans to touch upon these areas in her demonstration of the Evergreen software.

In the meantime, Melissa, here at work, is VERY close to bringing up our first Evergreen test server - NOT an easy task.

Shae will be here tomorrow as long as the weather cooperates!

Open Source Systems and Risk Management

2008-11-25T16:20:00.001-08:00

Here's a general article in LJ about the importance of assessing your risk before you take on an open source ILS system:

It's an interesting read and very timely:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6611591.html

Evergreen v. Koha - Comparisons

2008-11-19T17:46:00.000-08:00

I've been looking for posts comparing Evergreen to Koha and I'm not finding much. Some posts are old and no longer accurate. Very frustrating.

Here's one from an Evergreen user in the making:
http://kcplinnovations.blogspot.com/2007/11/comparing-evergreen-and-koha.html

and here is a basic comparison between the two by Josh Ferraro, from LibLime, who is very familiar with both systems, since LibLime at one time offered Evergreen hosting/support:

http://markmail.org/message/ajr432cbothuf2ey

I'm sure that there are plenty more posts worth reading out there. If anyone has any good comparison articles or blogs or what not, please feel free to share!

Darien Library's Social OPAC (SOPAC 2.0)

2008-09-14T17:11:00.000-07:00

On September 1st, John Blyberg launched his social OPAC at the Darien Public Library. This revamped OPAC front-end includes a number of web 2.o features like:

user-added ratings, comments, and reviews
ability for libraries to add community repository data

This OPAC front-end software has been released as open source and should work with a number of ILSes out there.

To experience SOPAC 2.0, for yourself, go to:
http://www.darienlibrary.org/catalog

Chrome - Google's New Web Browser

2008-09-03T09:25:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard, Google has developed their own web browser and it is open source.

It's in beta at the moment. To read about it, see the Google Blog post:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

-Amy

LibLime Scope of Work - Enhancements List

2008-09-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

An update on our work with LibLime:

We received the summary of enhancements that the LibLime team identified during our two-day scope of work study with them. Bibliomation staff has gone through the document to clarify some of the functionality descriptions and to make sure that all needed enhancements were included in the document as well as those items that were more "wish list" items and wouldn't be needed on Day 1 of a cutover to Koha.

Next steps:
LibLime will refine this enhancements list and send us the refined document. Bibliomation staff will then need to prioritize the list and return to LibLime. LibLime will then cost out the work so that we can see the overall cost of sponsoring Koha development work with LibLime.

For a list of enhancements currently being suggested and considered for the next version of Koha, version 3.2, go to http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:rfcs3.2&do=diff1220032151

Amy

The Day After (The LibLime Visit)

2008-08-20T18:24:00.000-07:00

Well, it was a pretty intense two days, but we think we managed to cover all modules and the specifics of our needed functionality with the LibLime folks.

The good news -- much of what we were requesting was already in the works, based on other consortial-sponsored development work. We won't know for sure what we would still need to sponsor until we get the full list from LibLime. They will be asking us to prioritize our development needs and once they have that information, they will be able to spec it out for us and attach dollars to it.

They were also very impressed with our test server installation and the level of configuration work we were already able to figure out on our own. As Brendan tells me, it's amazing what you can figure out when you spend your nights in your basement, pounding away on a server.

I will post more about those areas that still need development once we have the document from LibLime.

Amy

LibLime Scope of Work Study

2008-08-07T10:37:00.000-07:00

On July 31st, the Bibliomation Board approved our going forward with a scope of work study with LibLime, the main support vendor for Koha.

This scope of work study will identify those areas of functionality still needed in the Koha system for Bibliomation libraries to maintain the level of functionality that they have now. Many of these areas we anticipate to be consortial-related.

LibLime staff will be spending two days at Bibliomation headquarters later this month (August 18th and 19th) so that we can discuss our workflow needs and how Koha fits in to this workflow. We've given LibLime access to our Koha test server and private wiki. We've been using the wiki to track our configuration work and findings regarding the Koha system.

Once we have the results of the study, we should know which modules and features would need development work and the costs associated with this work.

The results will be brought to the next Bibliomation Board meeting, scheduled for Thursday, September 25th.

Amy

Plano ISD -- Independent Schools District (Texas)

2008-08-01T07:58:00.000-07:00

I was able to chat with David Schuster, Library Technology Coordinator for Plano Independent Schools District (ISD) in Texas. Plano ISD has 68 schools, ranging from pre-school to high school.

David plans to cut over to Koha on January 1, 2009. He's been working with LibLime and plans to sign a three-year contract with them to provide migration support and maintenance to their Koha installation. His libraries will be set up as independent branches. They will not share holds.

David and his team chose Koha because it provided the promise of continuous changes to the look and functionality of the ILS. It also has a web-based staff client, very easy to roll out new changes to all of his schools. Customization is very important to Plano ISD.

David thinks that he might sponsor some development work for the inventory control module that comes with Koha. Right now, the only thing the inventory control feature does is flag the item on the shelf. It does not provide detailed information regarding misshelved items or incorrect code information (wrong collection, etc.). He'd also like to see improvements made in spine label printing. Right now, Koha can only print spine labels in batches, not for an individual item.

Another possibility for sponsored work -- David is considering working with LibLime somewhere down the line to produce an icon-driven kid's catalog.

Other enhancements David would like to see with Koha:

Annual circ history information for each item
Batch creation of items
Batch editing of items
Off-line circulation module
Item barcode lookup for editing purposes
Reports are fabulous, but there needs to be a set of standard reports that can be easily shared among all libraries (maybe this exists now, but David hasn't seen it yet)

David has been told that there is work being sponsored right now to provide the ability for Koha users to perform batch item deletes.

LibLime will be providing custom style sheets for his elementary, middle and high school libraries.

I will touch base again with David sometime after January 1st.

--Amy

LibLime to Acquire CareAffiliates

2008-07-29T17:51:00.001-07:00

LibLime Press Release:

LibLime to Acquire CARE Affiliates

Today at 9:47am

ATHENS, OH and BLACKSBURG, VA--July 29, 2008 -– LibLime, the leader in open source solutions for libraries and CARE Affiliates™ announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement to sell select assets of CARE Affiliates to LibLime. The sale will include select products, related services and domain names along with associated service contracts. Final closing is scheduled for August 2008.

Carl Grant, President of CARE Affiliates will be taking a new position as president of Ex Libris, North America, effective immediately. "I'm delighted that LibLime has decided to acquire these assets," said Carl. "This will ensure the continuation of these products/services well into the future. I look forward to seeing how LibLime grows these ideas. I also feel it's important to say that this sale and my move is based primarily on personal reasons and is in no way a reflection on the open-source community or service providers serving libraries. Open source has a vibrant future in libraries and I'm pleased to say that Ex Libris is one of the proprietary vendors listening to this community as evidenced by their recent announcement about their new Open Platform strategy. I will continue to stay engaged with the library open-source community, albeit in a different role."

"We've been proud to list CARE Affiliates as one of our strategic partners since they started supporting open source in 2007," says Joshua Ferraro, CEO of LibLime. "This arrangement gives us increased capacity to deliver open-source and open architecture solutions for libraries in the strategic area of metasearching."

LibLime's acquisition of CARE again highlights one strength of open-source solutions -- no vendor lock-in. CARE's customers don't need to worry about switching to new solutions. With open source, switching vendors doesn't mean switching software.

This is LibLime's third acquisition since the company's inception in 2005. Earlier acquisitions include Ohio-based Skemotah Solutions and Katipo Communications' Koha division in New Zealand.

Koha Testing Continues...

2008-07-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

For the past couple of weeks, Bibliomation staff has been learning what we can about the Koha ILS. As I've written before, we have been testing version 3.0, but what we learned from LibLime while at ALA has us convinced that we won't really be able to configure the system to our consortial needs until a future release, due out sometime this fall. This future release will have something called system groups which will allow us to create specific profiles for our libraries and schools, and cluster certain locations together. (Think school systems and libraries with branches here.) We also want to be able to have each library bring up their own catalog without forcing patrons to choose from a LONG list of 70+ library locations. Some of this functionality is being developed for the INCOLSA network in Indiana.

In the meantime, Mary has completed the Horizon-to-Koha MARC mapping table and she plans to take a look at Koha's various indexes as soon as Brendan has brought up our permanent test server. We are also going through the functional specifications we developed back in 2003-2004 for our last migration to see what needs to be added/changed/removed. We have picked up quite a bit of functionality over these past few years so all of that has to be added to our testing checklists! We are using a private, in-house wiki to keep track of our Koha testing progress and that is working out quite well to keep us all informed of each staff person's work.

Amy

ALA -- Open Source Everywhere

2008-07-07T08:23:00.001-07:00

Just back from California and the ALA conference in Anaheim had plenty of open source programs from which to choose.

Mike and I attended "Planning for Open Source in Consortia" on June 29th. The panelists were Monica Shultz, IT Director of the Peninsula Library System in San Mateo, CA and Randy Dykhuis, Executive Director of the Michigan Library Consortium.

The Peninsula Library System is currently testing the functionality of the Evergreen system. They have not yet committed to migrating to the system, but so far their testing is showing it to be very flexible for their needs.

The Michigan Library Consortium has already begun their migration process to Evergreen and have selected a group of pilot libraries to move over to the open source system this summer. The Grand Rapids Public Library will be included in a later migration phase.

OPEN SOURCE INTEREST GROUPS AT ALA
Brendan attended the very first organizational meeting of KUDOS, the user group for the Koha open source system. They plan on setting up a 501c3 non-profit to support their efforts.

And Brendan and I attended the Koha interest group meeting in which those interested in Koha and those actually using Koha (in test and production) could share information and ask questions of each other and LibLime staff. who organized this interest group meeting.

--Amy

Howard County Library System (MD)

2008-06-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

I talked with Amy DeGroff, the head of Library Technology Services, at the Howard County Library system, in Maryland. They have six public libraries and about 1 million items. They circulate about 5 millions items each year. Howard County is a SirsiDynix Horizon library and they are in the process of migrating to Koha. Their go-live date is scheduled for December 2008.

Their original go-live date was supposed to be this fall, but they are now waiting for the new Koha acquisitions module, Get It, to be finished. They are co-sponsoring development of this with WALDO. It will be released in November, at a conference in North Carolina.

They chose Koha over Evergreen because they did not need the consortial features present in Evergreen. Howard County libraries function as branches in one system, with the same circulation rules and little need for individual autonomy. Although Koha does allow for this flexibility, Howard County is shutting that flexibility down.

Amy is really impressed with Koha's patron catalog. There is much innovation to be excited about. It is very easy to create public lists, pathfinders that bring up specific search results for patrons. Faceted searching works very well, too. To see their library catalog (in development), go to koha.hclibrary.org.

Howard County is working with LibLime as they work toward their migration over to Koha. LibLime imported their data. They have both a test server and production server.

Howard County has a web designer who is interested in contributing to the open source development. This staff person will receive computer programming training (Perl, etc.).

Amy was receptive to the idea of a visit from Bibliomation once they have gone live to see Koha in action.

Bibliomation's ILS Steering Committee

2008-06-25T12:21:00.000-07:00

At the June User Council meeting, Janet Woycik, chair of the Bibliomation Strategic Planning Committee, asked for volunteers to serve on the Bibliomation ILS Steering Committee.

The ILS Steering Committee will meet at specific times during our open source testing period so that we can discuss with them our progress and findings. We will be making a list of those open source ILS features that would require policy decisions and presenting these to the committee.

ILS Steering Committee Members:

Janet Woycik, CH Booth Library
Bernadette Baldino, Easton Public Library
Valerie Annis, Minor Memorial Library, Roxbury
Heather Morgan, Mark Twain Library
Lynn White, Terryville Public Library
Emmett McSweeney, Silas Bronson Library
Sue Phillips, Hall Memorial Library
Beth Lovallo, Woodbury Public Library
Jane Gallagher, Middlebury Public Library

We will also ask for volunteers to serve on our various taskforces, to be created later this summer.

The Green Mountain Library Consortium (VT)

2008-06-23T07:34:00.000-07:00

As Bibliomation begins our own open source investigation, we are very interested in talking to those libraries who have already decided to migrate to open source.

I had the chance earlier this month to talk with Stephanie Chase, the library director of the Stowe Public Library, in Vermont. Stephanie, along with some of her colleagues, have banded together to form the Green Mountain Library consortium. Originally formed to provide their patrons with OverDrive downloadable audiobooks, they have expanded their mission to moving from individual Follett systems to Koha's ILS.

Phase One of their plan involves bringing up individual Koha systems for 20 of these interested public libraries. They will be using committees (PAC improvements, circulation, etc.) to focus on the various improvementst they will need to develop in the existing Koha software. They plan to hire a programmer and web designer and share their time among all library participants.

They chose Koha because they viewed the software as more mature than the other open source ILSes available to them. Koha is programmed in Perl and uses MySQL and they had some experience with these programming languages.

They have version 3.0 up on a test server and are currently testing data importing. They plan to bring up Koha on inexpensive Linux servers and roll them out to all libraries by January 1, 2009.

Phase Two will involve blending all of these individual databases together to make one consortial system. They will begin work on phase two in June 2009.

To follow their progress, you can check out their wiki.

Since our paths are running somewhat parallel, we plan to stay in touch with them so that we can exchange information along the way.

On Wednesday, I plan to talk with Amy DeGroff of the Howard County Library System, in Maryland. Howard County is in the middle of their migration to Koha and they plan to bring up their new system this fall. I will post the summary of my phone call with Amy to the blog later this week.

Koha Test Server -- Up and Running!

2008-06-20T05:46:00.000-07:00

Brendan was able to bring up our first Koha test server yesterday. He installed version 3.0 on it. We are now familiarizing ourselves with the various administrative settings and seeing how much we can customize the setup for all Bibliomation libraries.

This will not be the final test server, but it's a good start for us to begin the learning process!

Welcome to BOSS!

2008-06-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

This blog will be used to detail Bibliomation's exploration of the open source ILS as a possibly viable next generation library automation system for our member libraries.
Stay tuned. We plan to provide regular updates as we move forward with our exploration!
In the meantime, if you haven't already, please read our "Open Source FAQ" for a better understanding of open source and its relevance to Bibliomation libraries.