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State of the Open ILS

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Our current ILS does not meet our needs: ... Socializing: Book bags. Book bags: RSS. Patron self-service. So what does Evergreen have today? ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: State of the Open ILS


1
State of the Open ILS
  • Dan Scott
  • OLA SuperConference
  • Friday, February 1, 2008

2
Launch
  • On September 5th, 2006, Evergreen went live in
    Georgia PINES with
  • Online catalogue
  • Patron self-service
  • Cataloging
  • Circulation
  • Report
  • 252 libraries, 8 million items, 1 system

3
Community
4
Why is Laurentian going green?
  • Our current ILS does not meet our needs
  • Upgrading to the current supported version broke
    our bilingual notices
  • Most investments in customizing our ILS would be
    thrown away if we move to a new discovery layer
    or system API lock-in
  • We have to migrate to new hardware anyway
  • Our systems librarian is a developer
  • We are not alone...

5
Project Conifer
  • Consortial installation of Evergreen for
    academics (Laurentian, McMaster, and Windsor)
    rough plan
  • Deploy test cluster (5 beefy servers)?
  • Install, configure, start loading data
  • Test and improve
  • Usability collect feedback, improve, and
    iterate
  • Performance and load
  • Expected benefits include new services, cost
    sharing, interoperability, and skills development

6
  • Let's get the ugly stuff out of the way

7
Myths and misinformation
  • Evergreen makes the same mistakes as traditional
    ILSes what we need is a loosely coupled system
    built on a service oriented architecture (SOA)
  • The heart of Evergreen is the Open Service
    Request Framework (OpenSRF) an SOA that uses
    JSON over XMPP server as the service bus and
    Perl, C, Java, and Python as service method
    implementation languages
  • Evergreen currently looks like a traditional ILS
    because all of the underlying components are
    surfaced to the user in a unified interface
    (staff client or catalog)?

8
Myths and misinformation
  • Evergreen is great for public library
    consortiums with hundreds of branches, but
    doesn't scale down.
  • Tell that to Carson Area Crystal City Schools
    (who run Evergreen for their high school
    libraries)!
  • My own experiences
  • I develop and test Evergreen on my laptop (1.5 GB
    RAM) currently loaded with 50,000 records
  • I build and distribute Evergreen in VMWare images
    that run happily in 512 MB of RAM

9
Myths and misinformation
  • Evergreen forces a top-down hierarchy on the
    libraries in a consortial implementation.
  • While its administrative model does support a
    hierarchical structure, you can create a flat
    hierarchy with an unlimited number of top-level
    members of that hierarchy
  • Each member can have its own policies, its own
    catalogue branding regardless of hierarchy

10
Myths and misinformation
  • Evergreen is too hard to install.
  • How many times have you installed your current
    ILS?
  • Evergreen does have a lot of system dependencies,
    but install scripts for Debian, Ubuntu, and
    Gentoo now do most of the work for you.
  • I'll be giving an Evergreen install and
    customization session at Code4Lib 2008 during a
    2.5 hour time slot

11
Myths and misinformation
  • We don't have the skills to support this
    ourselves.
  • Nothing forces you to support Evergreen yourself
    if you have an ILS today, you probably don't
    support that yourself
  • You can buy a support contract for Evergreen -
    and there are actually multiple businesses
    competing for your Evergreen support dollars!

12
  • So what does Evergreen have today?
  • Part 1 Patron interface

13
Discovery interface
14
Discovery spell check
15
Discovery results
16
Discovery detailed record
17
Discovery shelf browser
18
Socializing Book bags
19
Book bags RSS
20
Patron self-service
21
  • So what does Evergreen have today?
  • Part 2 Staff Client

22
Circulation
23
Patron interface
24
Cataloging features
  • Built-in Z39.50 client with support for searching
    multiple sources
  • MARC editor with contextual help, support for
    templates, validation
  • Rudimentary authorities support
  • Can load authorities, but can't define them on
    the fly
  • 'Bucket' support for performing bulk operations
    on records and items

25
Z39.50 client
26
MARC editor
27
Buckets merging records
28
Reporting interface
29
  • So what's in the works?

30
What about acquisitions?
  • Started by trying to integrate Apache OFBiz
  • We learned a lot, but OFBiz is HUGE
  • Opted to build what we need for fast iterations
  • Rapid progress in January
  • OpenSRF plumbing for budgets, funds, picklists
  • Web interface built on Pylons
  • EDI capabilities to be provided by BOTS
  • Target a complete buy a book acquisitions
    scenario by the end of February

31
Tell me about serials
  • Financial parts of serials are being built along
    with acquisitions
  • Plan for serials patterns - overlay one or more
    basic calendar schedules, with exceptions
  • Example 13 issues a year 1 monthly 1 annual
  • Example 364 issues a year 1 daily 1 annual
    exception
  • Want to support easy check-ins, even though print
    subscriptions are declining inspired by Kardex?

32
Academic reserves?
  • No academic reserves functionality yet
  • Basic design for academic reserves
  • Reserve item will be added to a class bucket
  • A class bucket will map to one or more
    instructors, a class name, and a class code
  • A class bucket will override its reserve items'
    location and circulation policy
  • Eventually we would like to integrate with course
    management software

33
Documentation
  • Wiki
  • Mailing lists
  • The Book of Evergreen

34
Are we there yet?
  • We're working on all of this it's being built
    one line of code at a time
  • Advocacy work and day-to-day business operations
    has slowed down the pace of development for core
    team
  • My time is split between project management and
    development oh yeah, and my ongoing hardware
    software collection development
    responsibilities
  • More dedicated skilled resources could propel
    this project ahead (welcome back, David Fiander!)?

35
But we're a geek-free zone!
  • If you don't have the skills in-house to set up
    and configure Evergreen, commercial support is an
    option for
  • Installing and configuring
  • Migration
  • Training
  • Support
  • Custom development
  • Complete hosted system

36
How do I get started?
  • Get on the mailing lists and the IRC channel
  • Please send us your acquisitions workflows (who
    does what and why) - requesting, selecting,
    approving, ordering, receiving, rolling over, and
    anything else...
  • Play with the demo site (http//demo.gapines.org)?
  • Both the OPAC and the Staff Client
  • Try out one of our VMWare images (you can run
    Linux on Windows!)?
  • Read up on the wiki

37
Questions?
  • When we're out of time, let's go for coffee.

38
References
  • Evergreen project http//open-ils.org/
  • Project Conifer http//conifer.mcmaster.ca/
  • My blog http//coffeecode.net
  • The Evergreen logo is a trademark of Georgia
    Public Library Service.

39
License
  • This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
    Attribution 2.5 Canada License. To view a copy of
    this license, visit http//creativecommons.org/lic
    enses/by/2.5/ca/ or send a letter to Creative
    Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San
    Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
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